My Birthday

It was very nice to be together.

Mum made my favourite carrot cake, adorned with the blue toy bike and white ‘happy birthday’ sign that’s sat upon every birthday cake I’ve ever had, and kept saying things like, ‘you stay there and talk Fiona, I’ll get the tea’.

Dad read out his latest musing about the importance of time spent together as the single blue candle flickered down to the wick.

Fiona was fresh out of a course at tafe that she’s doing to become a counsellor.  Perhaps most importantly, her presence allowed me to sit and watch and listen, and that’s my preferred position.

And with the allotted slices of carrot cake eaten, it was Fiona who turned up the volume on Midnight Train to Georgia so that we could dance and sing along to Gladys Knight and the Pips.

Every bit of it a familiar tradition. It was in its familiarity that we sat, and watched each other.