Memories

Honestly one never knows what is going to trigger a memory or many memories.

On Sunday my youngest daughter and family gave me my birthday present (yeah yeah it was my birthday AGAIN!! - there should be a law against birthdays after a certain age)
She gave me a watch.  Apparently she had asked her father (my ex husband) what to buy me...... WTF???!!  And he said "you can't go wrong buying your mother a watch".  (which is true - I love watches - as long as they are different - odd - don't look like a watch)

And that got me thinking about the rituals that surrounded birthdays in our house.... didn't matter what day of the week they fell on..... on YOUR birthday ... there was a celebration........ (there were probably parties on the weekends - but on YOUR day - we celebrated) 

We celebrated with Chinese food for dinner .......... and bought birthday cake with roses.... and presents with cards.  It was a tradition.  Even when I was young living in my parents house - bought birthday cake with roses was a tradition.  I loved the roses - most don't..... i loved taking a forkful of the sugary icing and letting it melt in my mouth....... I loved (no no - truth be told - I STILL love) sugary icings.

This year for some stupid reason..... I missed those tradtions..... missed the Chinese food and bought birthday cake with icing roses.  Stupid eh?? I honestly could  do without the fuss and bother of celebrating birthdays - but I missed the damn traditions.....   I almost - almost being the operative word - ordered some Chinese food in..... but decided it would be very sad to eat Chinese food by myself on my birthday...... so I settled for toast and cheese.


I did get roses though......... 10 of them ........... and they won't put any inches on my hips... they were the real kind....... and W drove them out to me...... and presented them to me in front of almost 200 kids at lunch time.  It was very nice - and I kissed him in front of the nearly 200 kids (ages 10 - 12) who teased me unmercifully afterwards.... and wanted to know if he was my husband - and when I said no.......... hesitated for a second .. .and then said "boyfriend" the girls giggled and the boys whooped it up.  They even swallowed their "cool" persona long enough to sing "happy birthday" to me which was honestly very cool to this old lady.


But the memories linger - like smoke from blown out birthday candles - wafting around in my mind.