The Year She Wasn't Sixty Yet

So it started like this...

What is it about the day of our birth, that we seem to want to recognize?

In the beginning...

The beginning of all that has happened since then.

Ms. SpoolTeacher has trouble processing very much emotion; so, she didn't notate her birthdate on Facebook.

Happy Birthday.
"Liked"
Thank you.
Hope you're having a great day.
"Liked"
Thank you.
Hope you're doing something special for yourself.
"Liked"
Thank you, (but I'm cleaning someone's house today and then grocery shopping for a friend who is lame and then cleaning my own house)
"You liked this."
Thank you.

How can she tell them she hasn't any friends. Oh, well they can tell by the Facebook count. Oops!

"Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear Ms. SpoolTeacher, Happy Birthday to you!"

Thank you.

"And many more...!"

There mother always filmed them singing that song, but, of course it was before sound and they just had to imagine what they were saying when they played it back, but they knew.
"And mannnnny mooooore!"

The year her babysitter made her cake.

Her mother always made a double layered round cake and would only use powdered sugar, butter, vanilla and milk to make the icing.
She would separate out a little of the icing and color it with those poison food coloring drops and then she would take a large nail and etch a scallop all around the edge and fill the etched scallops in with a little of the poisoned stuff .
She also etched "Happy Birthday" and who ever's name it was and their year with the poisoned icing too (She didn't know it was poison then. You can't blame you mother for everything.)
Anyhoo, they would all make a special deal out of the birthday girl and she would feel like a queen for a day.

One year their mother got a great idea and decided they were too old for little girl birthday parties. She decided to take them, and whichever of their best friends wanted to go, out to a matinee movie on base and after the movie the soda shop for a malted or ice cream bowl. She'd drop them off and come back and take them for treats.

This year Little Ms. SpoolTeacher couldn't find anyone but one to come.
One sister was sick, another off at something else and no one wanted to be friends. No one but one (The story of her life. As she happens to like it, it turns out).

It turned out to be her most memorable birthday of youth.
Everything went wrong, but everything turned out right, different but right. Her mother made sure of that.


And her babysitter who liked her so much..

And Alvin her dog.

That was the year Mrs. Smith
gave her a lemon tree.

The "Ben Casey Tree". The tree that wouldn't die.

Not even after being transplanted from their little house on the lane up to the farmhouse on the main street and then several times around that property because the farm workers kept thinking it was getting in their way.
Not until she left home and wasn't attending it.

Well, this year Ms. SpoolTeacher told everyone she "wasn't sixty yet".
She had a horrible time turning 30, no trouble with 40 or 50 but expects 30 doubled will either be double trouble or double getting over trouble. She's hoping for the best...a few little years from now...Sixty's the new forty you know.

Well this year she did see a movie with friends but it was late in the evening at the friend's house and they all had pizza not pie or cake.

Her friend who is eighty something, going on sixty, sent her a check with one condition,
"I want you to buy a hummingbird feeder, and not one of those cheap little red things. I want you to find a nice one."
 

So after searching online and reading the critiques she bought one of the cheap little red things.

As cute as these were, the reviews said they were lousy.

So now she can have two, one for the front and one for the back, surely her friend won't be mad.

No sooner than she put it out last night, this morning watering the front, a little hummer was buzzing around her head like a helicopter... she hadn't seen any all summer, amazing is what they are. Amazing. 

She never saw one sipping, but they're coming in so it won't be long.
So, why, even though the emotions are too much, do we want the cake and friends and the day to feel like a queen?

To feel counted. To matter. To be seen. At least for the day.
She may leave the balloon up forever.
"Liked"
Just to remember the year she wasn't sixty yet.