It's Happy Happy Birthday Time

The lights come on the hall, 6:30 am. I hear the familiar pounding on my brother's door. "Kurt, time to get up and give Mom her presents." It was Dad. I knew I was next. But as always, my Dad would faithfully come into my room and tell me the obvious. "Heidi? It's time to get up and give Mom her presents."
"Okay Dad," I would say, pretending that I hadn't been awake since he knocked on the first door, Liesl's.
This is how we did birthdays in my family. They were pretty different from most everyone else I knew growing up. Every weekday morning my family would drag themselves out of bed and into the living room, where Mom would cheerfully sing a hymn while the rest of us grumbled along, huddled around the furnaces on the floor. We'd then read a chapter out of the scriptures, me carefully counting how many verses needed to be read until it was my turn so I could sleep until then. And then Dad would inevitably get upset, "Heidi, follow along!"

But when it was someone's birthday, we would substitute reading scriptures for giving the birthday person their presents. Mom would buy all their presents, of course, since we thoughtless children were far too busy and poor, and well, thoughtless, to buy them a gift. She would carefully wrap up each present in a plastic Macey's grocery bag and lay it on the table at the place where we sat each night for dinner. Then, in the morning, we would all slump around the table as the birthday person would sit beaming and excited beyond belief at their place, awaiting the very enthused, "happy birthday," mumbled from the tired mouths of my siblings.
And the gift would get shoved across the table to the birthday person.

Liesl, my youngest sister, would go first and we would proceed in chronological order thereon. She would always give socks and underwear, or 'unmentionables,' as we called them. The rest of the gifts would be other needed clothes, books, and whatnot. My dad would always give the 'big' gift and someone would always say, "Wheel in the bike!" since that was a common 'big' gift when you were about 8 or 9 years old. After the gifts were given, we would all kneel painfully on the linoleum kitchen floor while someone said the family prayer. Then we'd have the breakfast of the birthday person's choice.

The rest of the birthday was fairly standard, a birthday dinner of the person's choice, followed by a cake. The birthday person would light the candles, while Kurt would put on the pressure to make sure you lit each candle with only one match, which also would lead to the singeing of the finger, the blowing out of the match, and the burning of a small hole on the tablecloth. And then Kent would do his magic trick of wrapping the invisible string around the match and then popping the head off. And Liesl would act like she had no clue how he did that.

After the matches were lit, we'd all sing Happy Birthday To You at the top of our lungs, making sure we'd be as off-key as possible, and Grandma would put her hands over her ears. Then the birthday person would blow out the candles, and if they didn't get them all blown out in just ONE blow, they seriously choked, and their birthday streak was ruined. And of course Kurt would then brag about how he's never broken his streak, but of course, we ALL know the truth.

Finally, Mom would pull out the candles and cut the cake, while Brian distributed it, making sure to give himself the largest middle piece. My family has a thing for middle pieces of cake. For some reason sides or corners=death. One time me and Kent had to go to work early, so we ate dinner early and Mom had made a cake for dessert. The way it had been cut yielded exactly 2 middle pieces, so of course Kent and I laughingly took the 2 middle pieces and skipped outta there.

So what is the purpose of sharing this delightful snippet out of my life? Well, today is my dear old Mom's birthday. And in the spirit of it all, I thought I would share a slightly embarrassing moment in her life.

The Forbidden Freezer

We kept tons of treats in the freezer. Mom would shop at the day-old bread store and buy the Hostess snack cakes, donuts, and fruit pies there which she would put in lunches. Our lunches always consisted of the same things, a peanut butter sandwich, a piece of fruit, and a Hostess treat. My friends at school were always jealous of the Hostess treat, although I was secretly jealous that they got things like fruit snacks and Capri Suns. But back to the freezer. The freezer was downstairs in the basement, in a room where the water heater was, next to the 'fruit room' which was our storage room.

It was a wonderful summer day, and Shera and I had been playing in the playhouse in the back yard, sweeping the dirt floor and probably getting mad at Timmy for spying on us. We decided that a package of stolen Hostess donuts would really hit the spot. So we creep inside and head for the basement stairs when we are caught...Mom was walking up the stairs. But something was amiss. She looked guilty. And upon closer inspection, I saw that she was hiding something under her shirt! I heard a crinkle...the familiar crinkle of Hostess donuts! Mom was stealing Hostess donuts from the freezer! This was clearly hilarious, since she'd gotten mad at us time after time for stealing treats from the freezer. And why was she stealing anway? She was the one who'd bought them. I guess Mom didn't want to appear the hypocrite. But it just goes to show you that even moms fall prey to their own rules.
Happy Birthday Mom, I love you!