Birthdays are simply mile markers on life’s highway.

When I was about to turn five, my mother told me that I was not having a birthday party that year. Of course, I was having a birthday party that year, but my mom told me this because I kept asking if I was having one and she’d planned a surprise gathering for me.

But, you can’t tell a four-year-old something and then veer off the plan.

On my fifth birthday, people began to arrive ...