The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with

Host: The café was half-empty, its wooden tables glistening beneath the faint glow of hanging amber bulbs. A winter evening, sharp and still, pressed against the windows. Snow drifted down outside in silent spirals, painting the street in pale ghosts of memory. The fireplace crackled near the corner — an old thing that hissed with the weary rhythm of time itself.

Jack sat alone, his grey eyes fixed on a small cake set before him — a single candle burning low, wax running like tears down its side. Jeeny entered quietly, the cold still clinging to her coat, her breath visible for a moment in the warm air.

Jeeny: “You didn’t tell me it was your birthday.”

Jack: “Because I didn’t plan to remember it.”

Host: His voice, low and heavy, carried that old gravel of tired self-awareness — the sound of someone who’d long since learned to distrust celebration.

Jeeny: “Most people at least pretend to care.”

Jack: “Most people pretend a lot of things. Samuel Johnson once said, ‘The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.’ I suppose I just took his advice seriously.”

Host: The firelight danced across his face, catching the lines around his eyes — those small cracks that come not just from age, but from thinking too long about things others avoid.

Jeeny: “He said that in the eighteenth century. Life was shorter then, harder. Maybe he had reason to feel that way.”

Jack: “You think time makes people less afraid of themselves? No, Jeeny. We just got better at hiding it. Birthdays remind us of one thing no one wants to admit: time’s a debt we never finish paying.”

Jeeny: “You make it sound like living is a punishment.”

Jack: “Isn’t it, sometimes? Every year, another reminder that you’ve gone one step further into the unknown, one step closer to vanishing. People light candles, sing songs — like children whistling past a graveyard.”

Host: A long pause settled between them, filled with the soft ticking of an old clock on the wall. Jeeny watched the candle, its flame trembling like a fragile secret trying to stay alive.

Jeeny: “Maybe the problem isn’t the candle, Jack. Maybe it’s what you refuse to see in the light it gives.”

Jack: “Which is?”

Jeeny: “That every year survived is a rebellion against the void. We don’t celebrate because we forget mortality — we celebrate because we’ve faced it and kept walking.”

Host: Jack smiled, but it was a tired, crooked smile — the kind a man wears when he’s heard something beautiful but can’t let himself believe it.

Jack: “You make it sound noble. But what’s noble about repetition? Another year, another round of pretending to change while the world spins the same way it always has.”

Jeeny: “Change doesn’t always roar, Jack. Sometimes it whispers. Sometimes it’s just a single heartbeat that didn’t stop when it could have.”

Host: Outside, a bus passed, its headlights gliding over the window, briefly illuminating their faces — hers soft and resolute, his cut with the faint shadow of resistance.

Jack: “You talk about living as if it’s art. But most people don’t have time for poetry. They’re too busy surviving to think about meaning.”

Jeeny: “And yet they still laugh. They still love. They still find reasons to make cakes and sing. That’s the miracle — meaning shows up even when we stop asking for it.”

Jack: “Or maybe it’s just habit — ritual without belief. We celebrate birthdays because we don’t know what else to do. Like lighting incense for gods we stopped worshipping long ago.”

Jeeny: “No, Jack. We celebrate because we need to remember what’s still sacred. Even if the gods are gone, the act of lighting the candle is what keeps us human.”

Host: The flame flickered, casting a halo of light that touched the lines of their faces — time carved in different ways. The snow outside thickened, falling like the slow, deliberate passing of years.

Jack: “You think birthdays are sacred?”

Jeeny: “I think reflection is. The day you stop remembering your birth is the day you start forgetting your existence.”

Jack: “But remembering means facing what’s gone — youth, chances, people who didn’t make it this far. Maybe forgetting is mercy.”

Jeeny: “Or maybe it’s surrender. You don’t honor them by forgetting, Jack. You honor them by living — by remembering that every year survived carries their echo.”

Host: Her voice softened, almost breaking, but never quite. The fire crackled, a small sound like the memory of laughter.

Jack: “You know, when I was younger, birthdays meant possibility. Now they just mean subtraction — fewer years left, more ghosts behind.”

Jeeny: “Then light the candle for them. Not for you. For the ones who never got another year.”

Host: Jack stared at the flame, and for a moment, something shifted in his eyes — not surrender, but memory. He could almost see the faces of those gone, caught in that fragile glow.

Jack: “You always know how to make melancholy sound holy.”

Jeeny: “Because it is. Melancholy is what keeps us humble. It’s what makes joy mean something.”

Host: A gust of wind rattled the window, and the flame wavered, bending low before recovering. Jack watched it — how it refused to die.

Jack: “You know, Johnson was right. Humanity does try to escape these thoughts. Maybe that’s what birthdays are — a distraction from the truth.”

Jeeny: “Or a ritual to face it together. We laugh so the silence doesn’t win.”

Host: Jack leaned back, his eyes now softer, more wistful than worn. The tension that had hung between them all evening seemed to melt, like snow turning quietly to water.

Jack: “Maybe I just forgot how to see it that way.”

Jeeny: “Then start again. Every birthday is an invitation to begin — not to measure what’s lost, but to recognize what’s endured.”

Host: The clock struck, a low, echoing sound that filled the room like a heartbeat stretching across time. Jack took a breath, then picked up the matchbox.

He lit a second candle.

Jack: “For the ones who didn’t make it.”

Jeeny: “And for the ones who still can.”

Host: The two flames stood side by side, steady, quiet, their light trembling across the table like fragile hope. Outside, the snow softened, and the city seemed to pause, listening.

Jack: “You know, Jeeny, maybe birthdays aren’t reminders of age. Maybe they’re reminders of time’s patience — that we’re still here, despite everything.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. The candle burns, not to mark what’s gone, but to prove what remains.”

Host: The fire glowed warmer now, the room filled with that rare kind of silence — not the empty kind, but the full kind, the kind that holds peace inside it.

Jack smiled, truly this time, a small but genuine curve that softened the steel in his eyes.

Jack: “Then happy birthday, I suppose.”

Jeeny: “Happy remembrance, Jack.”

Host: Outside, the wind stilled, and the first star broke through the clouds, a small spark in the deep blue. The café stood in its quiet corner, the candles still burning — two tiny suns against the dark, holding their fragile ground against the vastness of time.

And for a fleeting moment, both Jack and Jeeny seemed to understand what Samuel Johnson could not escape — that to remember one’s birthday is to stand face-to-face with existence itself, and to whisper back:

“I am still here.”