Yesterday was my dear Mother's birthday. She would have been 88 years old. Today is my birthday. We always shared our birthdays together. However, she told me the night of her birthday while I was in the womb that I was not to be born till the next day so she could finish out having her grand celebration....dining on lobster and champagne and dancing till the wee hours of the morning. Like the dutiful daughter, I waited...I always listened to what my mother said...not that I always did what she bid...I saw the path she chose for me I just had to meander off here and there a while then I would get back on..la te da..you know what I mean, don't you? So because I also got to dine (intravenously I guess you would say) on lobster and champagne in that bubble like stage of my life, I enjoy lobster very much and one of my favorite things to do is dine in fine restaurants. My friends tease me because I don't know how to order at fast food restaurants (really it's true). But I don't feel like I am missing a thing. Now I'm not too much on champagne and wine...much rather have a glass of juice but none the less, fine dining and dancing are my ideas of a happy birthday...oh, and not to forget...breakfast in bed! That was a tradition my parents always spoiled us with (my sister didn't really enjoy that because she said she felt lonely in her bed breakfasting by herself. Not me...I enjoyed the tulip in the special vase and my egg cooked in olive oil with Syrian bread to lap up the yolk and the fresh grapefruit that my mother always sectioned for me and of course a very tall frosty glass of orange juice. When we became of age...18 in my mother's eye..she would give us a cup of coffee with sugar and cream. It was alright..but still I would just as soon have 2 tall glasses of juice! It would also make me happy that even if the day turned dark and stormy, if the morning light that hit my eyes was bright and sunny..it made it a perfect day. My parents always gave me a poetry book for my birthday and I remember one in particular..the first pages said "If a little toad winks as you walk by, or you wish he would, this little book is dedicated to you" It was a book by Gwen Frostic and it was called A Walk With Me. I still have it, of course, still have all the books my parents gave me, and it sits beside my bed and it is the first thing I look at when I wake up..right after I look at the sunshine.
