Thursday Thirteen #112

THURSDAY THIRTEEN

Today is my birthday and I'm sick with a cold. Bleh. Ed is sick too so I'm not expecting anything special to happen today. Maybe this weekend. So I'm entertaining myself with glowing memories of birthday's past.

Thirteen Birthday Presents That Still Glow In My Memory

1. 3rd birthday: The lacy, gauzy yellow baby dress with a slip my mother made for my doll. Five years later my baby sister wore it on a few Sundays when she was around three months old.
   
2. 5th birthday: a set of doll dishes made of aluminum and stamped with pictures of Bo Peep and her Sheep from my Aunt Margaret, my mother's twin.
3. 7th birthday: The angel food cake decorated as billowing skirt for the doll standing in the center hole. I think my mom made the cake for the doll that was from her twin sister.
4. 9th birthday a small china fawn given by an older cousin about sixteen then who herself still glows in my memory
5. 12th birthday: a Monopoly set and a dark blue cable knit sweater
6. 13th birthday: a portable Underwood typewriter about two years older than I was. I had taught myself to type on my Mom's typewriter at age eleven and I think I had begun to monopolize it. But the sense that I got that my parents were encouraging my writing was the essence of the glow its memory still holds.
7. ? birthday: a bracelet made by my younger brother. It was a silver-colored chain with a half-dozen or so marbles in shades of blue attached that he had frozen and then dropped into a cup of hot water. The marbles were threaded with tiny fissures that made them look like something out of a dream. I'm fairly sure this was for one of my birthdays after I entered Jr. High but well before my 17th birthday.
8. 16th birthday: a leather-bound, palm-sized Bible containing both Old and New Testaments from my parents. I still have it and still love it though I have to have a powerful magnifier to read it anymore.
9. 16th birthday: a bracelet with a Sweet Sixteen charm. Silver in color but not real silver. From my Aunt Margaret
10. 18th birthday: a floor-length dress, with autumn colored leaves scattered on green background. It was picked out by my Dad and was the first dress I had that was styled more for a woman than a girl.
11. 40th birthday: the blue office chair with adjustable height and arms that rolled. bought jointly by my parents and siblings. Again as with the typewriter at age 13, I saw this as their willingness to encourage my writing.
12. 41st birthday: the baby doll my husband bought me. I use to collect baby dolls and will again probably when we have our own home again.
13. 42nd birthday: the Avon Complete Works of Shakespeare in one volume from my husband

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