A Tale of Two Birthdays

I had two birthday celebrations today. One was for my friend Nancy. A tiny group gathered to needlepoint and have cake in celebration of her birthday coming on Wednesday. Nancy does not like Chocolate cake. I was the cake volunteer so I made her a triple layer vanilla cake with raspberry filling and vanilla Swiss buttercream. It was a work of love and a lovely afternoon with friends.

I was home just a bit before Jan picked me up to go join a cast of hundreds to surprise Holley as today is her actual 64th birthday. Friends gathered on the street each picking up a candle and a giant sparkler. Our plan was to first sing, “When You’re 64,” then Happy Birthday, followed by an original song about Holley written by Anne Eberdt.

Holley had came out in her wheel chair in a hot pink jacket, with her family, to witness the outpouring of love. We sang the first song, the best that we could. Did better with Happy Birthday and then had to light our sparklers. That was a little harder than we anticipated. Eventually we got them all lit and sang the the original song to the tune of “take me out to the ball game.” Then we cheered.

We needed to cheer so that we didn’t cry. Holley’s husband Paul spoke and thanked us and then Holley typed a couple of messages of love which were read to us. Holley asked for us to all stand behind her for one group photo.

We stood in the street in the dark, hugging each other. Happiness and sadness were all tangled up together.

It was the tale of two very different birthdays. You never know how many birthdays you are going to get. Celebrate them all.