Birthdays

Birthdays at Cohousing by Molly Lynn Watt October 2025

Hi Alan, Paula, Justin and Monica,

On Monday, we are planning to celebrate Alan‘s birthday in the simple way we do at Coho, a special dessert and we sing a song and we all love sharing birthdays. Birthday celebrations together started before we started living together. We would have a cake or some special dessert at business meetings, which happened at the friends meeting while we were planning our community and everything would stop and we would sing and everyone would have something sweet or healthy to eat- a cake or cookies or ice cream or something like a piece of watermelon. Just to say this is a special day and we are honoring the person whose birthday it is and by doing so we all enjoyed a great many celebrations.

When we moved into Coho, we the community wanted to disassociate celebrating birthdays from the business meetings because the business meetings already took a very long time and we live together for goodness sake! At that time, the only reliable social event that happened was the pizza potluck and yes, it was every Monday night From the start. So the community asked me as coordinator of the pizza potluck to take over birthday celebrations for anyone who wanted to celebrate their birthday with the community. And for the most part, these have been the celebrations that people who want to celebrate with the community have had as part of the Monday night meal. We offer the opportunity to everyone in the community, but some people do not care to celebrate with the community and or to celebrate by coming to the pizza potluck. Perfectly understandable that we all do not want to do it the same way. But in general, there have been no other community generated celebrations of people’s birthdays with the some exceptions like when Jean Mason turned 100! Sometimes people give themselves a birthday party using the community space and invite a few people from Coho and a few friends from outside, but that is an entirely different matter.

The birthday celebrations at pizza potluck are not a drop in time at the end of a meal if someone decided not to sign up for the meal, they are integral to the experience of being part of a meal that night. We like to create a sense of community and a sense of real conversation going on and to respect that by not interrupting it with an influx of people who choose to simply come and sing and eat cake. We’re such a big community that somehow it’s a little unruly when that happens and very disruptive to the people already involved in creating a meal together. So you can see we’ve had some experience with that and that’s one of the reasons we know it doesn’t work very well.

I am taking the time to spell some of this out because you are new in the community and it’s just one of those Coho things that those of us who’ve been here a long time do you know and we don’t think to explain to anyone else. When we first started living together, there was some talk of never having desserts at meals and never serving sugary things, but that quickly fell by the way side because too many of us were exceptions to that kind of guideline in our own lives. Besides, if you don’t want to eat dessert, you can always say no thank you, which you’ll find I do a lot! 

When we first started living here and celebrating birthdays at PP, we would ask the families to provide a cake or watermelon or toppings for ice cream or fruit, or something else that was special to share with the community at the meal. A contribution as it were. But it turns out at least the third of us and maybe a half of us living here do not really live with a family larger than 1 person anymore as we have grown older, and some of our family members have slipped away. And it always felt a little awkward to be asking someone to bring themselves a cake! So we started having it be a choice, people are welcome to bring something or I am happy to buy and sometimes to make something. I usually ask for a flavor preference and most of my contributions come from Costco‘s bakery on site. The chocolate cake and then vanilla cake are great favorites and a woman named Alice can write a birthday greeting and the birthday celebrant’s name on the cake! This comes out of the pizza potluck budget. I get receipts and I turn them in unless I’ve decided to bake the cake and make it my contribution as a potluck. Or Susan Sternfeld or some other good soul, sometimes Marianne Nelson does. It’s a pretty fluid way of making a celebration.

On my birthday, I have often had melon, or an apple pie or berry toppings for sorbet, I don’t have a very sweet tooth, but I am married to someone who has a huge sweet tooth. On Dan‘s birthday I usually bake a cake. But sometimes I buy a cake. The main thing is we all sing happy birthday and are happy to celebrate the person who is enjoying their birthday that night. It’s pretty simple but it meant a lot to me even on birthdays like my 85th my 80th by 75th my 70th and my 65th. Usually, it’s just the right amount of celebration for me and it’s a good thing to tell my friends that my community celebrated my birthday at a community meal..

We are so pleased that Alan is willing to celebrate his birthday on Monday with all of us. And I am wondering if you would like me to purchase a cake or provide some toppings for ice cream or find a nice watermelon if they’re any this late in the season or if your family has time and would like to provide something celebratory tomorrow night. I am happy to do this for you and I am unaware of your particular favorite flavors! So let me know if this is something on my list for tomorrow because I am looking forward to singing to Allan tomorrow night, and hearing happy birthday sung by your family in Spanish!

I hope you do not mind, but I am going to copy this long explanation to CCH talk LIst because there are a number of people who are unsure what the deal is on birthdays and this describes the deal fairly well as a kind of fluid negotiation!

We are so happy you were in our community and do remember to sign up or let us know how many in your family are planning to come to Pizza potluck on Monday night.

All the best, Molly