Ferment a Birth Day

How do you want to ferment yours?

38 years ago, I was born in a village called Gold Lake. A midwife came to the house and delivered me into the world.

There was no hospital birth certificate, as everyone was born at home back then. For years, I asked my mother when and what time I was born. She’d reference the lunar calendar, confuse noon with early evening, and once said, “That year had two Junes.” Eventually, I stopped asking. We never celebrated birthdays anyway.

So this birthday thing became a knot, like the kind your child ties when just learning how. With patience, and maybe your teeth, it could be undone or ignored. But this year, as an unexplainable agitation knocked at the door, I wondered: what is it trying to say?

I admire friends who gather people to celebrate or turn birthdays into charity events. As for me, I freeze. Ask me what I want for my birthday, and I’ll give you a blank stare.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what came before my birth, what it was like in the womb. I looked at the red cabbage I bought on impulse, still waiting to be brined. I love the idea of shredding it, soaking it in salted water, and watching fermentation work its quiet magic. I want to hear the bubbles rise and burp, those subtle signs of unseen change. How serene it is, the red cabbage just resting in its glass womb? But when I decided to ferment it, something in me froze.

The red cabbage and my birthday feel tightly knotted together in my chest.

What was the day of my birth like? Was my mother happy, or disappointed that I was a girl? In those days, girls were seen as water poured onto the street, destined to become outsiders once married. Did she long for a boy to carry the bloodline? Back then, if women gave birth only to girls, the belly took the blame for being "useless."

Were there any rituals? Like in some African cultures, where days of celebration follow a birth, a name is chosen and announced to the ancestors? I wonder if my birth had its own quiet ritual?

I need stories, details, descriptions of that day to remind me I exist, truly exist, as a person with a beginning. It's about the sacredness of having a life. I’ll die eventually, but my stories will remain, carried in DNA, passed on through memory and blood.

I like to imagine myself in heaven someday, hearing my son tell his children that their grandmother once bought a red cabbage, trying to recreate the feeling of a womb, searching for meaning in her birth.

Thus, my blank stare is justified. It’s been there since the moment of my birth. It stirs something in me, this quiet awareness of a fear of living that I’ve unconsciously carried. There’s nothing to expect from the world kind of bleakness.

This revelation loosens the knot a bit. I felt tears welling up in my eyes, my body always tells me when I’m on the right track. Love is calling me again, to look at the fear of living within me, within my parents, and within theirs. It asks nothing but that I see, without judgment, without pity, just to witness what is.

I can’t access the past, but I still have agency over the rest: over the stories I choose to tell, for myself and for others.

Two days ago, on the 15th of July, I launched my website (www.lilymarino.com). My first official birthday. I can hear the bubbles, can you?

Thank you for keeping me company throughout this journey, my dear friends. Some of you I know, some I haven’t met yet. I wish that one day we can gather and share stories together. Let me know if you’d be interested. Share my website to friends who might like what I offer. Thank you.

Love,

Lily