A month of birthdays
Apr. 14th, 2010 11:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyMy mother will be sixty on Saturday, although her birthday seems to be taking a whole month to celebrate. I bought her tickets to see Tom Jones, but Tom didn't think to organise his tour around my mother's birthday, so she had to go to that in March. She didn't want a big party or anything like that, so her friends have been taking her out in groups: her nursing colleagues/card circle took her out for dinner last week and two of her oldest friends took her out to lunch yesterday, and so on. By not having a party, it occurs to me she's doing very well for meals.
Last week there was a photo in the classified pages of the local paper to mark the sixtieth birthday of a lady named June Bonnet (which is a great name). The photo showed June Bonnet as a student nurse, back in the days when student nurses wore little red capes, and veils starched into the shape of fighter jets. My mother has a photo just like it, but June Bonnet's was a fine example, with her fighter jet veil beautifully perched in her hard, permed hair. My mother showed me the newspaper and said, 'I did my training with her.' A pause. 'If you do that to me, I will kill you.' Righty-o then.
I wouldn't have done that anyway, because (a) I don't know where my mother's student nurse photo is, and (b) I've always thought that people who put embarrassing photos of their relatives in the paper to wish them a happy birthday are only slightly less suspect than people who get personalised number plates on their cars. Not my sort of people at all. But even though she doesn't want a fuss, I do want to give her something on Saturday as she can't really unwrap her Tom Jones tickets again. So I have brought an old copy paper box home from work and covered it in wrapping paper and I am filling it with small things that she likes. So far I have got: the CD that came with the Tom Jones tickets (I didn't tell her about that when I bought them), a collection of quilting fabrics, the loudest pair of socks I could find (she wears them to work) and a gift voucher from her favourite clothes shop. On Friday I will pick up a plant for her garden and something tasty from the gourmet food shop and a book (although she usually doesn't like my choice of books, so maybe I will just get some nice smelly stuff instead.) Any other suggestions?
Last week there was a photo in the classified pages of the local paper to mark the sixtieth birthday of a lady named June Bonnet (which is a great name). The photo showed June Bonnet as a student nurse, back in the days when student nurses wore little red capes, and veils starched into the shape of fighter jets. My mother has a photo just like it, but June Bonnet's was a fine example, with her fighter jet veil beautifully perched in her hard, permed hair. My mother showed me the newspaper and said, 'I did my training with her.' A pause. 'If you do that to me, I will kill you.' Righty-o then.
I wouldn't have done that anyway, because (a) I don't know where my mother's student nurse photo is, and (b) I've always thought that people who put embarrassing photos of their relatives in the paper to wish them a happy birthday are only slightly less suspect than people who get personalised number plates on their cars. Not my sort of people at all. But even though she doesn't want a fuss, I do want to give her something on Saturday as she can't really unwrap her Tom Jones tickets again. So I have brought an old copy paper box home from work and covered it in wrapping paper and I am filling it with small things that she likes. So far I have got: the CD that came with the Tom Jones tickets (I didn't tell her about that when I bought them), a collection of quilting fabrics, the loudest pair of socks I could find (she wears them to work) and a gift voucher from her favourite clothes shop. On Friday I will pick up a plant for her garden and something tasty from the gourmet food shop and a book (although she usually doesn't like my choice of books, so maybe I will just get some nice smelly stuff instead.) Any other suggestions?