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Story Notes:

This is dedicated to NanReg who is one of the most supportive people I know!  Nan - You deserve one million words of fic on your birthday! Have a happy one!

Disclaimer: These characters are not mine.  No infringement is intended.

Author's Chapter Notes:

 

 

The singular chapter to this birthday fic.  It's been a while so please forgive any cannon mistakes there may be - I'm hoping it's ok.

 

 

 

To turn one year older, she thinks now, is a wonderful thing.

Because being young and foolish brings with it confusion and heartache in a way that a person doesn’t realize until later on in life.  A person doesn’t really realize until there are blankets on the rocking chair and toys in the garage and people to tuck in at 7:30 when the sun is only just starting to yawn in the sky.

Countless things can happen in a year.

Countless wonderful things can happen in only a year.

Thinking back, she recalls the last time she literally dreaded a birthday.

She’d been wrong to dread it, but she didn’t know it then.  And nobody had even mentioned it when it happened – there were no flowers on her desk, no candy in her pockets, no card in her lunchbox wishing her the best day ever, and Jim was with Karen, laughing by the copy machine, and so Pam sat in the bathroom and cried.

It was a childish thing to do.

Self-indulgent.

Painfully depressing.

And she thought to herself then – I’m too old for this kind of thing.

Which, today, makes her laugh, because honestly she hadn’t even grown up at that point.  She hadn’t even started.  There were no Golden Books on her bedside table and there were no pacifiers in the refrigerator, so she had no idea what 'too old' even was.

Crying in the bathroom.

Now she figures it was kind of endearing…or she hopes it was endearing because she’d been interrupted by the second to last person she’d wanted to see at that moment when Karen apparently decided that carrying on with Jim in public had gone on long enough for that hour, and she needed to powder her nose.

Pam had glared at her in the mirror.

Karen had offered a sheepish smile and ducked into a stall and Pam had tried to hold her breath, standing at the sink and clenching her jaw.

There had been tense silence.

Pam had felt the weight of being one year older push down against her spine and beat in rhythm against her temples.

Then Karen had cleared her throat and Pam felt herself shaking her head at her reflection – don’t say anything, she had silently begged, please just don’t…

“So, is something wrong?” Karen had asked.

Pam sighed.

“Nope,” she responded.

“Hm,” Karen hummed.  “You’re just crying in the bathroom because you enjoy it?”

“Yep,” Pam answered, trying not to acknowledge the humor, although it was not lost on her.

“That’s kind of weird, Pam,” Karen told her blandly.

Pam watched herself in the mirror, examined her own puffy eyes, shook her head and shrugged her shoulders at nothing in particular.

“It’s my birthday,” she finally admitted after a few moments of self-flagellation.  What’s the point of refusing to admit it, she had wondered?  On days when everybody forgets your arrival onto the planet, was there any point in not just saying: Hey guys, I was born on this day long enough ago that nobody cares anymore…can I go home sick?

But for some reason, she thought, people don’t admit it usually.  There’s a passive aggressive streak to almost all human beings when it is their birthday and nobody cares.

People get angry and upset and refuse to participate in normal human interaction and refuse to simply stand up and announce that they are now a year older and everybody sucks. 

Pam decided in that moment that she’d like to change the trend.

Jim should know.

Everybody should know.

“It’s your birthday?” Karen asked, and Pam could tell from the sound of it that she was shocked, surprised, probably appalled that Pam could turn yet another year older and still be just a measly secretary.  No art career, no marriage, no friends really…

Just nothing.

“Yes, it is my birthday.  Which pretty much sucks,” Pam told her honestly. 

The toilet flushed, then, which seemed appropriate.

When Karen came out, though, she didn’t look shocked or surprised or appalled, she just looked…

She looked like she understood completely.

Which served to make Pam that much more irritated.

“Birthday’s are kind of the worst,” Karen agreed, stepping in awkwardly close to wash her hands and prompting Pam to move away from the mirror and sit down on the sofa, unhappy, annoyed, jealous as all hell.

“It’s not that bad, I just, um…” she swallowed and then she found herself spitting out even more confessions to a woman she barely even liked, “I don’t have anything I wanted…I didn’t do what I was supposed to do…I’m thinking back on it like what the hell have I even been doing?  Standing around?  Answering phones and watching re-runs of Flava Flave on VH1?”

Karen chuckled and handed Pam a paper towel, which she set beside her because paper towels were too hard against her face to be used for nose blowing or pathetic-tear-wiping.

“You haven’t been standing around. You’ve been…” Karen looked up at the ceiling in thought for a second, considering what she wanted to say.  “I know we aren’t really friends and this isn’t my place,” she started.

You got that right, Pam thought silently.

“But I just feel like…Listen, my mom always says this to me, and when she says it I want to punch her in the face because it’s so…the opposite of helpful, but I’m going to say it to you anyway,” Karen had crossed her arms, then, and leaned against the wall, looking at Pam in serious thought as Pam shifted uncomfortably, suffering from her inferiority complex and her inability to take advice.  “Some days are for grabbing life with both hands and just shaking it hard to get all the good stuff out,” Karen had told her and Pam was already feeling the pinch of aggravation this little tidbit of advice was about to bring…  “And then there are other days, which are for sitting down, putting your feet up, and saying: In a year, everything will be fine.

There was a long pause between them as Karen let that hang in the air of the Dunder Mifflin bathroom.

“She says it to me because she thinks I’m too driven and I’m aging myself too fast,” she explained.

Pam sat quietly refusing to comment for fear of what she would reveal if she spoke, then.

“She’s a hippie,” Karen explained even further, and with that Pam couldn’t help but laugh.

She couldn’t help but laugh because for some reason knowing that Karen’s mom was a hippie made her feel better.

Knowing that Karen’s mom thought Karen was too driven made her feel better.

Thinking about what her life would be like in a year somehow made her feel better…just a little.

She licked her lips and she felt her brow furrow in thought.

“Thanks,” she told Karen, who waved her hand through the air in dismissal.

“I have no idea what I’m talking about,” she responded, self-deprecating.

“No, you do,” Pam answered.  “You…I just, um, you have a lot in your life that’s really great,” she told her quietly and Karen frowned for a moment before shrugging her shoulders.

“So do you,” she answered and Pam thought Karen had completely missed the point.

Karen had left the bathroom and Pam had sat there for a while, considering this advice she’d been given by her mortal enemy, wondering whether or not she should care that Karen seemed kind of nice, considering whether or not she should leave work early and go sit with her feet up watching crappy reality television and eating pizza…

Eventually she emerged quite the worse for wear, hoping nobody would notice her and hoping nobody would say anything when she picked up her purse and left the office.

But there wasn’t much chance of that.

The desks were empty and the lights were off and she could hear Michael laughing and feet shuffling and she rolled her eyes.

“You guys?” she called out, “just turn the lights on I can hear you.”

And when the lights turned on she had to fight to keep from crying again – such a girl – because there had been a paper mache statue of her in front of her desk and a big sign that said “You’re another year older! Don’t break a hip!” hanging from the ceiling, and everybody clapped their hands and laughed and gave her cake…

And Jim had given her a wrapped portrait of Dwight, which she had tossed into the dumpster two days later for a myriad of reasons…

And it really wasn’t that bad in the end.

A year later she was dating the guy of her dreams and pursuing an art career and hadn’t seen a single episode of The Real Housewives of Orange County.

So, now, she’s standing in the bathroom and Erin is sniffling in a stall.

She can hear the sound of paper towel – which is way too hard for nose blowing and tear wiping – and she can hear Erin trying to control it.

And she doesn’t think it’s Erin’s birthday – there isn’t a party planned – but she’s not sure that has anything to do with the advice she’d been given a couple years ago in this very same scenario.  Good advice, if she’s honest.  Real advice that was somehow helpful.

Pam clears her throat and thinks about being younger than she is.

“Are you ok, Erin?” she asks.

“Go away,” Erin begs, but Pam stands firm, digging in her purse for her small packet of tissues.  She reaches her arm over the top of the stall door and waits.

Erin eventually takes them.

“Thanks,” she mutters, and Pam nods even though Erin can’t see it.

“You know I had this really awful birthday once and um...” Pam says to fill the quiet, and she wonders what exactly she’s doing getting involved in this…it’s like…she can’t control it lately.  She meddles.  She wonders if it’s a mom thing.

“What?” Erin answers, sounding unhappy and dejected.  Pam grins sadly.

“Did I ever tell you that when I was engaged to Roy, I was in love with Jim?” she asks.  She doesn’t wait for a response because whether or not she told Erin before doesn’t really matter.  “And Jim was…he asked me to leave Roy and I…I just couldn’t do it.  I was stupid, you know?  And I was scared and I had no idea what I was…” she sighs, “And when I eventually did break up with Roy like two months later, Jim had found someone else and there was like no point to any of it.  I was so depressed.  It was gross actually,” she confesses, “Like sweatpants at the grocery store, and ice cream at 3 A.M., and calling in sick all the time…”

“Aw,” Erin empathizes, and Pam thinks that she’s a kind person. Strange, but inherently kind.   “That sounds really hard,” she mumbles and Pam nods her head in agreement.

“Yeah it was.  It was really hard.  Because I’d been with the wrong person, and I knew Jim was right, and it’s really hard to always be thinking back, you know? And regretting things?”

There is silence and Pam considers Andy and Angela and Erin and whether Andy is really worth the turmoil…whether Angela even ever slept with Andy…whether Erin has bigger issues than anybody realizes and this should be handled with care…

“But somebody gave me really good advice that helped me a lot,” she offers, and she hears Erin blow her nose quietly.

“What was it?” she asks carefully.

“She told me that some days are for grabbing life with both hands and shaking it to get all the good things out,” Pam relays,  “And then there are other days, which are for sitting down, putting your feet up, and saying: In a year, everything will be fine.

Erin doesn’t say anything.

For a while, neither does Pam.

Until eventually she sighs and considers how being young is full of confusion and turmoil, and how sometimes one year can snap everything into place…sometimes birthdays are wonderful things. 

“Everything will be fine,” she promises Erin.  “Just sit down and put your feet up for a little while.”

Again, it hangs in the air like Karen’s voice had done in the past, and the weight of it feels heavy on Pam’s tongue.  She’d never spoken it out loud before, and this feels like an admission, like a purging of the past, and Pam is in some ways grateful.

In all ways grateful.

She turns to leave Erin alone, but before she reaches the door the stall swings open and Erin’s arms are tight around her.

“Thank you,” she whispers, and Pam pats her back, consoling.

“You’re welcome,” she says.

And when Pam's birthday comes around she’s happy to turn another year older.  She’s happy to have whipped peas staining the front of her shirt.  She’s happy to have large hands against her shoulders and the smell of him on her t-shirts.  She’s happy to be older, with a pillow on the sofa that says “Home Sweet Home” and a bib in the laundry that says “Nobody Puts a Baby in the corner” and her peace of mind standing six feet tall in the kitchen, making coffee.

She’s happy to be one year older and she doesn’t envy other women anymore…

Because countless things can happen in a year.

Countless wonderful things can happen in only a year.

Chapter End Notes:

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NAN!



Stablergirl is the author of 30 other stories.
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This story is part of the series, let?s celebrate birthday month in style today.. The previous story in the series is Happy Birthday - To Whom?. The next story in the series is Birthday Trip.

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