Today is your sixty-fifth birthday. Time for the government to start paying you back, ha-ha. I would have brought you a cake in the shape of enormous breasts, and joked that if you held it down around your waist you’d recognise what it was supposed to be.
The boys would have made you cards and we would be driving up to see you, or maybe you would have been here, at my little house in the valley. You wouldn’t really want to watch The Captain’s football game, because you never really caught on to football (much to your mother’s chagrin), but you’d go. And you’d have everyone on the sidelines laughing.
You would have made lasagna, or maybe that layered turkey thing that His Nibs ate right out of the casserole dish. You would have been cooking the whole time you were here, then complaining that it was too damned hot outside. I know which spot on the couch you would have claimed as your own; I know which coffee cup you would choose from the cupboard every morning. I know how your eyes would light up when The Nipper told you one of his fantastic stories. You would smile your upside-down smile and look up at me with a sparkle in your eye.
I don’t think much about your last birthday. You were too young for that birthday.
Happy sixty-fifth, Mum. Wish you were here.
i make squee noises when you tell me stuff.