Memories of my childhood served with a slice of cake

We had a great day today at my mother’s birthday.  We all went up to the house around one o’clock.  The snow is mostly gone and you can see the first signs of spring on the way.  While we were there a mating pair of wild turkeys came into the yard and yes there was an incident with one of my nephews chasing them and then the turkeys turning the tables and chasing my nephew.  Quite funny.  We had intended just to have tea and cake but as always with my brothers and sisters, everyone arrived with more goodies so in the end we had a surprise mid afternoon meal complete with light white birthday cake, layered with strawberries and cream.  Delicious.  Everyone had a great time, it was loud and riotous and exhausting and once the dust settled we stayed a little longer to visit.  My friend Claudette made a surprise visit which really pleased my mother and she brought my godson, her son with her.  Kai is getting so big so quickly; he is certainly no longer the little baby that I have in mind.  I have to remind myself he is six and all grown up, or at least by his standards.  Mom gave me a box of old photos and when we got home here, my guy and I started going through them, pictures of me on my first day of school, playing with my cat Charlie, riding my bike for the first time.  Looking through those old, dogged eared pictures of family reunions, school plays and walks in the fields around the house where I grew up, made me realize how fortunate I am to have grown up in the family I did and in the place I did.  It is almost idyllic, like a snapshot from another time and place, where things may not necessarily have been simpler or easier, maybe feels like it now, but certainly the pace of change was much less than now.  Some things were more consistent, you could expect similar things and a similar life as your parents.  But as times have changed, I guess those days are lost.  I looked a pictures my mother took of me on graduation day from university, so many of them, that I can see the pride she must have felt that day just through the sheer number of photos she took.  I was the first one in our family to get a university education and seeing me there in my gown must have meant a great deal to my mother; her job of raising me to get me to that point had been accomplished.  It feels good tonight to be connected to a past.  And to be able to share the stories and pictures with my guy, share with him another part of my life, was truly very special.