Okay, okay, disclaimer: I can only do the daily blog thing during the year. All the pieces get jumbled up in summer, and I always start a puzzle at the corners. That said, let me continue with today's musing.
Yesterday during a lovely dinner at a family favorite restaurant that remembers us by unusual birthday songs and rewards us with free squash blossoms and sorbet, I awaited the moment I became a teenager apprehensively. 7:23 p.m. ticked closer and closer as we devoured salads and risotto, and I silently expected a fairy to burst from the bread bowl and wave a wand to change me, make me more mature, more responsible, OLDER. Five minutes. We ordered dessert. Three minutes. I refilled my typical house-fizzed seltzer glass. One minute. I didn't have time to keep time, counting seconds, as I was far to busy punching a hole in the universe with my finger, grinding into my napkin anxiously.
Just as I was about to grab my mother's injured wrist to examine her watch, the chefs appeared at our table holding my dessert on a large plate with "Happy Birthday" drizzled in swirly chocolate script. At the top of his lungs, the male chef bellowed, "Now listen up!" A hush fell over the restaurant, and my parents looked at each other with dazzled eyebrows; this had never, in 10 years, happened to us. "These people," the man continued, "are going to sing a birthday song you've never heard before. It's amazing."
Lightning speed! "Round?" "We need Chloe." "I take second part." And we were off. The lyrics are: We wish you a happy birthday, a joyous and celebrated birthday, to our dear Chloe, we wish you a long long life. After the crowd returned cheerily to their complimentary soup, I realized it 7:25 and no one had noticed. Exhaling, I let the mutterings that I must have missed something be drowned in chocolate syrup, and dug in.
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