Eat the Cake? When Your Birthday Aligns With Tragedy
My birthday falls on May 25...the day George Floyd was murdered. As the one year approaches, I spoke to others who will share their day of arrival into the world with the tragedy of another.
Photography by Molly DeCoudreaux; Cake By Alexis Aviles
A few weeks ago we celebrated my boyfriend’s 34th birthday. Actually, we celebrated his 33rd and 34th birthday–the 33rd being canceled last year as the mark of the beginning of this year-long pandemic. Meeting outside at Alamo Square Park in San Francisco, it was one of the first times we had gathered together with all of our friends since the start of shelter-in-place. While we were still getting comfortable with the idea of gathering in groups larger than two, the day was quite joyous. The common phrase that materialized in every conversation was how lovely it felt to “be around people” again. To catch up in-person, outside the confines of a screen. To put a hand on someone's shoulder or, dare I say, hug. With many in the group being vaccinated, and with vaccination opportunities opening more and more everyday, we all looked forward to the next birthday so we could have a reason to gather again.
It was one of my friends who remembered that my birthday was coming up soon. “Yeah… it is.” I mentioned, my eyes drifting to the ground before adding, “Though, I’m not quite sure that I want to celebrate this year.” With a year of no festivities on her mind, she wondered why I wouldn’t want to celebrate. I pondered whether I should even share it–the day having been so blissful. So I divulged carefully. “Well, it’s May 25.” And while the date sounded familiar, it took a moment before she remembered, realizing what day that was. When it hit her, “Oh,” was her somber reply.
Before 2020, May 25 was relatively unremarkable. But by now you’ve probably heard it repeated thousands of times. On national news stations. In statements of solidarity. Plastered on Instagram icons and shareable graphics. And most recently, reported over and over in the trial of Derek Chauvin for the killing of George Floyd. Because May 25, previously a day only distinguished every seven years for aligning with Memorial Day, is now a date of infamy. A day in which a man whose job it was to protect, took the life of Black person, purportedly over a $20 bill. A date where Black people were reminded of how our humanity, or more pointedly the lack there-of, was viewed in the eyes of our law. A day that started an international revolution. A justice rallying cry. A racial awakening. Our most pressing modern movement for the defense of Black lives.
But since Floyd’s death I’ve found myself with a conundrum. I haven’t stopped thinking about the fact that for me, May 25—a day meant to celebrate my arrival in the world—was now paired by the horrific departure of another. A day to celebrate my Black existence was renowned for the theft of another. And I began to wonder if others who shared my birthday felt the same.
On May 25, 2020, my partner and I met up with two of our best friends (who also made up our complete quarantine circle). It was an unreasonably warm Memorial day for San Francisco, so we sat together in a backyard and had a BBQ. I wore a dress for the first time in weeks and a red party hat, and sipped wine in the sun until I was pink in the face. It was just 24 hours later that an Instagram post would alert me to George Floyd’s death. This would be the first thing I would post about him, sharing the post on my Instagram story with a note, “Honestly grateful to be alive another day. This could be me tomorrow.”
Alexis Aviles was born May 25, 1995 in San Francisco. She spent her 2020 birthday with friends in Northern California. “On my actual birthday I had a weird, very socially distanced party. But I just remember looking at the news a lot that day and being like, there's a lot going on. Like, I couldn’t really feel excited.” The next day is when she’d see Floyd’s video begin to circulate on social media. “That was definitely one of my first thoughts… that this is gonna be a big thing. Every year. Forever.”
May 25 is actually a really amazing part of the year to be born. Growing up, the end of May marked the end of the school year. Coinciding with graduations and the official start of Summer break, it's often emblematic as the end of one chapter and the beginning of another. The weather gets nicer. The days become longer. There is less to do and even less to worry about.
“I really like where my birthday is,” noted Michael Garcel, born on May 25, 1998, in Miami, Florida. “It doesn't coincide with any major holidays where people are typically getting gifts for other people… I always felt bad for those who have birthdays in December. And it's Memorial Day weekend half the time, so it's pretty cool. I really enjoy my birthday.”
Michael spent his 2020 birthday on a hike with friends. “We got some takeout on the way home and then we had some drinks and enjoyed the rest of the evening afterwards. It was very low key.” At home was when he first saw the Floyd video. “I was just kind of like, scrolling through my phone and I saw this nine-minute video of a Black man with a knee on his neck. And I was very confused… it turned out to be George Floyd.”
But while Alexis felt immediately that this day would be one to remember, that wasn’t Michael’s initial reaction. “I didn't anticipate that it was going to be the movement that it was. You know, I focus a lot on civil rights and equity—that's the kind of work that I’m in. And, you know, my reaction to it was like most people. I got very emotional, very upset. I didn't have much hope that they would prosecute the officer, because our justice system is a piece of trash.”
Sarah Arvizo, born on May 25, 1988, in El Paso, Texas was on a run in Brooklyn, New York when she came across a protest for Floyd. “I ran into this huge march. So I walked with them for a bit.” That march was on May 30, and it would mark the first time she would learn about Floyd’s death. “I think that for me, it was really when I was like, wow, this is a profound event.”
Regardless of how and when we learned of Floyd’s death, the discovery that his death coincides with our day of births has been a painful one, particularly as our birthday, and the anniversary of his death, gets nearer. Even with Chauvin’s recent conviction, the idea of “celebrating” anything in the face of his legacy feels flagrant and selfish. We realize and accord that the day has become larger than just us.
But if there has been any birthday to celebrate in our lifetimes, 2021 feels like the year that we should. This past year, a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic has swirled around us. Death hasn’t just been around every corner, but on the lips and in the lives of those we love the most. More than 550,000 Americans have died. And somehow, we are still alive. So far, we’ve defied a highly infectious disease. Overcome toilet paper shortages and being apart from our loved ones for an entire year. We lived through our cities shutting down and windows being boarded up. Though life is different, we are alive.
Though death has always been around, the elements of this year brought it right to our doorstep. And as a Black woman, my daily reality in America has always been one of constant survival and perseverance. I sat in horror as I learned the news of Breonna Taylor’s killing—the parallels of our lives triggering me to the core. Not only were we the exact same age, her birthday only 11 days after mine, but we even closely shared a name, “Breonna Shaquelle Taylor”. When the grand jury refused to hold Jonathan Mattingly, Myles Cosgrove, and Brett Hankison accountable, I could only hold myself tighter. To honor my skin and the gift of Black womanhood. This is the exact time that I need to honor my existence.
As the Chauvin trial unfolded, I heard my birth date repeated over and over. May 25. May 25. May 25. But as the trial moves into the rearview, those days when George’s story headlined our daily news start to become an even more distant memory. It already feels that people have moved on. And that’s painful, too.
“I think about how those next two months [after Floyd’s killing] were so intense. In terms of like, how social media was. Now I look at it and I'm like, the momentum is gone…” shared Alexis. “I think about my birthday this year and I wonder if people are gonna do the same thing. That they're gonna post that one day, and it's gonna be like, “Don't forget!!” but it's like, you kind of did forget.”
The loss of Daunte Wright and Ma’Kiah Bryant has brought a resurgence of BLM content. A reminder to white people that the work is far from over because they’re still killing us. But Black life is in the everyday, not relegated to moments of tragedy. And while I am pleased to see so much noise being made for their justice, I’m reminded that Daunte was killed on April 11, almost a year after May 25. And that it was only a moment after Chauvin’s verdict was read, that we mourned the loss of Ma’Kiah. And what did all those marches, and Instagram shares, and anti-racism books and magazine covers and Aunt Jemima erasures and statue removals and painted sidewalks mean if Daunte and Ma’Kiah are not with us today?
“You know I was talking to my friend last night about this, and I said, “You know, I think about [George Floyd] pretty frequently. I feel like I'm going to think about that forever.” shared Sarah. “I mean you can hope that we do what we can to make the world a better place. The world that he no longer gets to be in… I hope that that's the future that we'll see.”
And we aren’t the first group of people to suddenly share our birthdays with a national tragedy—and we surely won’t be the last. I’m sure you know at least one person with a birthday of September 11, or the April 19 Oklahoma City Bombing, or even the January 6 insurrection. And as mass shootings continue to rise, or natural disasters hit, or groups of idiots storm the capital, or Black people continue at unfathomable rates to lose their lives and livelihoods at the hands of police, it seems that there will eventually be a darkness that overshadows nearly all of our days of light. There will always be someone enduring their worst day on a day when someone else will be eating cake.
But there’s one thing that is true for all of us May 25 babies, and that’s the fact that our birthdays are no longer about just us, but the legacy of the man we get to share it with. And while birthdays mark the day of our arrival in the world, they’re really about honoring the life that we have while we’re still able to live it.