I'm not a fan of birthdays. It's not that I mind getting older--I'm actually pretty comfortable with being a middle-aged grandma, and I come by the gray in my hair honestly. The thing is, for some reason things go wrong around my birthday. Someone suggested recently that it might be a curse, and if I believed in such things I'd be inclined to think that it was: for five years my birthday has brought everything from sewage backing up into my kitchen to a friend's house burning down to my father ending up in the hospital with heart trouble (and that's just a random sampling). I've reached the point where I try to keep the whole thing low key, as if perhaps if I gloss over it, the fates won't notice and nothing terrible will happen.
This year (thus far) I did manage to avoid catastrophe, even though my family refused to let the whole thing slide by unmarked and couldn't resist putting together a few presents and some cards and a strawberry shortcake with fresh strawberries from my dad's garden. We also had a nice dinner out, and I can't really complain (now that I know they didn't trigger a flood or plane crash with their efforts). But the best part of the celebration for me was when my daughter sang this song for me, making all of the women in my family cry.
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