Birthday wishes

A few years ago I decided that from then on I am going to ignore my birthdays! Who needs all those changes in figures every year? You hardly get used to two digits when suddenly one or two new ones come up! It's really disconcerting! Trouble is that children, family and friends won't let you forget! They exclaim enthusiastically: "It's your birthday today, how wonderful!" Big deal! What's so wonderful about it? 

Truth is that if they would forget, I would sit there in a corner completely miserable and say to myself: "So that's it, nobody remembers, no one loves me anymore!" But as it is now, everybody seems to celebrate that I am getting older! I get one party here at the Towers together with all those who were so lucky to be born in February, I get another party together with Hanni another fish, I get invited for dinners, lunches with complete disregard that this may cost me an additional 30 minutes on the treadmill, I get a whole flower field from my son and daughter-in-law in Germany, and my daughter sends me something from San Diego because of course I have nothing to wear!

What would my children say?

My friend Hanna reached her eightieth birthday and she invited some people for a lavish brunch down in the dining room. The celebration was very nice and the food was sumptuous. Later her son and her daughter stood at the head of the table and started to eulogize their mother. They remembered their childhood, youth and also the years later when Hanna was a wonderful and quite perfect mother. While they talked, my free-running imagination started a trip of its own and I started to imagine what my own children would say at my eightieth birthday. It is still some time off but let's suppose I too invite my friends to this kind of celebration.

My daughter, as the older one would probably start:

"She was a good mother generally, she fed us and she dressed us and she scolded us She made very good chicken soup. And I loved her mamaliga!"

Here my son would interrupt: "Why do you have to mention mamaliga? I hated it! But her chocolate cake was awesome!"