Happy 94th Birthday, Mom!

Tomorrow is my mom’s 94^th birthday. In another lifetime, she would have hated me sharing her age with anyone – but mom doesn’t know how old she is anymore and doesn’t really react much when I tell her.

Oh, sure, sometimes she expresses surprise that she’s almost 94. And sometimes she tells me she doesn’t believe me.

I can’t blame her – because I do tease her a lot. Like, for instance, when she points at my 42 oz water bottle and asks me what’s in it, I tell her it’s filled with vodka. At first she looks startled – and then she smiles at me and says, “No sir, Jane Marie!”

Nope, I still can’t pull one over on the lady!

Just yesterday when I told her that we were going to celebrate her birthday this week, she said she was grateful she was in such good health and can still get around at her age.

Which is true. Mom moves a whole lot slower, but she can still get up and get herself to the bathroom – or to the dining room for a meal. And she always does a little boogie move with the lady who serves her.

It’s really cute.

But then five seconds later, mom has forgotten about the interaction.

So, yes, I’m grateful, too, that she can still get up and walk on her own. But, oh, how I wish she didn’t have dementia and still retained her memories.

Because then she could tell me her fondest birthday memory when she was a little girl.

Or she could tell me what kind of birthday cake is her favorite.

We knew for sure that Dad’s favorite was Boston Cream Pie, but Mom was always pretty cagey about her favorite. I don’t know this for sure, but I figure it was because she was happy to get any sort of dessert that she wasn’t responsible for baking.

Speaking of which…I wish we could laugh about the first time I baked a birthday cake for her when I was a kid – and used granulated sugar in the frosting instead of powdered sugar. (Clearly, I needed more adult supervision than I had.)

Well, we can still laugh about the last thing. She won’t have any memory of it, but it’s still funny. And I can still see the looks on my family’s faces as they gamely attempted to eat cake with gritty frosting.

Live and learn – right?

Yeah, scarred me for life. This is probably why I’m a big fan of the Betty Crocker frosting in a can. Or more likely why I order birthday cakes from the bakery these days.

So I’ve picked up some brightly-colored helium-filled mylar balloons for Mom. We’ve got cards for her to open and Vince will get her a lovely bouquet to celebrate her 94^th birthday.

And when we sing “Happy Birthday” to her as she blows out the candle on her store-bought birthday cake, I’ll smile knowing it’s wayyy better than a homemade cake from me. Mom will smile because she still likes sweets.

But, sadly, I won’t know if I’ve gotten her her favorite flavor. It’s something I guess we’ll never learn now – and that makes me sad.

But I’ll put a big smile on my face anyway. Because ninety-four is a big deal. And we love her.

Happy birthday, Mom!