Celebrating Wisdom: Mom’s Birthday and yes, let them eat cake!

This post is in honor of  my Mom who celebrated a BIG birthday this week–replete with all sorts of birthday cakes and other cool party stuff… (ok folks, which birthday did she celebrate?…..(answer at the bottom of the page….)–Her birthday was celebrated at a Thai restaurant with her good pal Bob (who also likes birthday cake)  and a couple of his relatives,  because the young Thai server is taking English classes with her—-and my mom is really proud of  the young woman’s hard work (she saves her tips so she has enough money to take English classes) and  Mom wanted to  share how well she is progressing in English.  The test word was “broccoli”—as it has a number of sounds that are very difficult to master if Thai is your native tongue and it was important that we all share the success of  getting the “r” sound pronounced perfectly.  And, yes, “broccoli” was pronounced perfectly and there were big giggles all around the table…

My mom is a leader of the pack when it comes to adventure and she runs circles around almost everyone I know—at 65 she opened a school for young professional athletes—tennis and golf–ran it for 5 years, sold it and then went off to teach English in Slovakia for a couple years and then came back and is now doing a second MA in history (two classes), teaching a 12 week class on Islam (very controversial) and,  teaching ESL at a local middle school—and of course tutoring her young friend for the TOEFL.  Yep, that’s my Ma—AND she loves to explore and experiment with food from everywhere—-(she passed that on to me too) hence the Thai food on her bigtime decade breaking birthday.

So this post is a little bit about cake (for the fun of it)—simply because Mom loves cake—but as I don’t have any photos of the cake we had (too dark to take pictures)…. I just wanted to share the ideals of my Mom who has live a long and very full life of love,  good food, good adventure and a lot of controversy…..(but of course!!).

So a little bit about the joys of cake….  We were lucky—as little kids we were allowed to eat cake (and pie and ice cream) for breakfast because  it has the same ingredients as bread (and ice cream is just frozen milk) (when we came back from Japan, we often had soup for breakfast which, when we told our elementary school teachers—they were shocked!!)   Anyway, Mom would often eat cake first and then eat dinner.  The favorite is chocolate cake—and there is a photo of me at 3, up on a stool, mixer in hand, making a chocolate cake (I would then set the table for the restaurant and the family would be allowed to eat cake for dinner). Then there is “kuchen”, or the apple cake we would eat on picnics—and the well remembered Sacher torte we had in Vienna—and the funny bean cakes we would eat in Japan….ah yes, Mom led us to many a cake stall in many a market in many a fascinating village…

So, to honor a woman who has lived her life full to the brim and who cut the path for some ground breaking adventures—(those adventures led to South America, Japan, Finland and Slovakia—to name a few—-and, if she had her way, she would be off to Africa tomorrow…THANK YOU!!!

Many more Ma—and again, Happy Birthday.

With her pal Bob….

 

(did you guess her age?…..Ok….it was her 80th birthday…..and she is out teaching tonight…..)