I grow old…I grow old…

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.***

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I hope I never grow old enough to dread birthdays, to use coy  phrases like “39 and holding”, or to spend the day reflecting bitterly on my newest wrinkles.

I hope that even the big birthdays will always be opportunities to celebrate life, to look forward to a new era, and to plan what I want to experience next, rather than a time to  think about the things I haven’t yet accomplished.

I’ve had my share of birthday parties, and special birthday dinners, and one or two birthdays spent alone with a bottle of wine and a straw and a phone pressed to my ear.

And I am here to tell you that there are some things that just never get old, no matter how old I get:

Cake

Champagne

Flowers

Chocolate

Friends

Family

Presents

It was with great pleasure that I celebrated my birthday this last week, with all of the above.

Michael made his classic yellow cake with chocolate frosting–a perennial favorite, especially when served with a tall glass of milk.  The secret ingredient, of course, is love.

My uber-baker younger sister made a white cake with strawberry butter cream frosting.  Sissy’s gift of perfect, pink, flowery cakes has become something of a birthday tradition for me.  This one was a White Chocolate Whisper Cake from The Cake Bible, by Rose Levy Berenbaum.

My 15-year old nephew, dear one, arrived with a big bag of my favorite Lindor chocolates.

Several friends came over to share in the bounty of cake, as well as a few bottles of Prosecco.  There were popping corks, and perfect isosceles triangles of cake, and eating and drinking and laughing.  There was discussion of how I should commemorate next year’s birthday, which will be one of the really big ones.

There was a houseful of kind, clever, funny, shiny people—what could be more festive?  What better birthday blessings could I ask for?

And while I was perhaps just a little worse for wear the next morning, it was merely from the bubbly, not from being another year older.

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