Today is my firstborn daughter's forty-fifth birthday. We went out to lunch and had a lovely time celebrating together. Today's lunch was nice, but not nearly as memorable as her twenty-first birthday celebration.

Laurel had been married four months on her twenty-first birthday. She and her sweet young husband were living in Nashville Tennessee. She was far from home and a bit homesick. Her husband and I decided to surprise her on her birthday with the thing she was wanting the most, a visit from her mom. He told her that he had invited a classmate home and to prepare a little extra for dinner. A friend picked me up at the airport and just before dinner I walked into their little apartment. She screamed and jumped up and down for a long time. She just couldn't believe I was there. During the night she tiptoed into the living room to check and make sure that I was really there sleeping on their couch. She was very excited. The next day she had to go to work and I set about making birthday dinner and a birthday cake. Laurel loved spice cake and I came prepared with the ingredients for her favorite cake. I had made birthday cakes for her and her sister and brothers every year. I was a good baker. My cakes were always good – except that year. I'm not sure what I did wrong, but that was the ugliest cake I have ever made. When I started to spread the icing the cake started to split down the middle. I tried to repair the split with toothpicks and more icing. The split widened. There was a large gap that just grew beyond fixing. There was no time to bake another cake so we just celebrated with the world's ugliest cake. My beautiful daughter loved it. We ate every ugly bite with gales of laughter. That birthday cake is remembered with more smiles than any other I have ever baked.

Happy birthday my beautiful girl. I love you.