Your recounting your 16th and especially your appreciation for what your mom did really touched me.
But, since you sort of brought it up, there was something about my appreciation that should be revealed, something missing from our young people these days. Something that, in the end, did make it the best birthday ever.
The cake was horrible. My birthday is on the 30th of oct. day before Halloween. This cake was a weird orange color, it had a yellow sugar moon with a black shadow of a witch passing in front of it. Ad a black cat with a hunched back below. It was horrendous.
I wanted to cry when I saw that cake. No friends, no pink bows and party dresses, just that ugly cake.
But i saw my mothers eyes. I saw how her hands moved, little bird like motions, jokes about me being a Halloween baby, my poor mother was saddened that she could not do better..I read it in her face. I think she expected me to reject, to, I don't know, be offended.
I made myself laugh, I made myself be delighted for her sake.
And in the end, I was. We both agreed that sugar cookie moon could have been used as a hockey puck , other than that, a cup of the new international coffee, some cake and mother-daughter talk, it does not get much better than that!
It was the best birthday ever because I was loved and I learned what love was.