today

is your birthday.

It makes me remember birthdays gone by.  When I surprised you, with the help of your boys, with a party at Jesse Owens park with 80 plus friends from work, from the neighborhood and from soccer in 1996.  Your sister had tragically passed one month before – but this party put a smile on your face for just a bit of time.  Robyn would call – faithfully – each year and do her best breathy version of Marilyn Monroe singing happy birthday, mr president…  Your birthday cards (most of them not rated G) with my mother’s distinctive handwriting addressed to Robert or Bobbert and signed Love, Doug & Mims.  I would have theme dinners.  If you wanted my lasagna, then the tablecloths would be red and green and Mario Lanza would be crooning in the background.   But, your all time favorite dinner – and most requested – was my fried chicken, my seasoned gravy, sherrie-corn, and spice cake with my french white icing.

Forty-four years of dinners and movies and cards and cakes.  I was hoping for forty-four more, but that was not to be.  So I remember with love and tears, the birthdays we shared … and I smile.

Happy Birthday, honey.  With all my love.