Birthday Number 51

My first birthday
August 27, 1964

Good lord. Evidently my love of cake began at an early age. Look how young my parents were, how adorable! That was fifty years ago!

I guess there was another party which meant more cake for me:

Doesn't Sophie sort of resemble my darling mother in that photo?

Oh, here I am eating cake on my sweet sixteenth birthday with one of my oldest friends, Audrey.  She lives in New York City but usually calls me a day or so after to wish me happy birthday. We've made a ritual out of that, and I would never want her to call me on the actual day. I'll pick up the phone and she'll say, Happy Birthday! and I'll say It was the 27th! and she'll say I thought it was the 29th! and then she'll tell me that the only reason I remember her birthday is because she was born on the exact day that my parents were married, which was in October of 1962, ten months and several weeks BEFORE I was born, my mother is quick to remind me. You know, just in case I thought less of her. In any case, this silly ritual has amused Audrey and me for decades.

Sometime this week I'll probably eat cake with my other oldest friend, Moye, and we'll laugh together and I'll realize how much I love her and am grateful for our long friendship. Later today, I'll eat cake with my children, open presents from my sisters and my parents, be grateful for a body that is strong and healthy, and a  life that is blessed with beautiful children, family and friends.

I hope to live another fifty years on this wonderful planet, particularly if I morph into my southern Italian peasant grandmother and live in Bora Bora in one of those huts over the cerulean sea.