Milestones on the path

My daughter will be 30 in a few days.

I spent the weekend preparing for a party to celebrate.

 Last year she graduated Summa Cum Laude from UMass Lowel.

This year she turns 30.

Next year she will have a masters in psychology.

All of the hard work she has put into her life is paying off.

It's absolutely freezing here...our heat has been kicking on all day.

So I'm glad I didn't plan a cookout. 

I'll be making my famous chicken salad

with grapes, lemons and parsley.

I'll also be making two pasta salads.

THIS one and THIS one.

I couldn't decide which one looked better.

I'll round things off with a tossed green salad

and my mother will be bringing some appetizers and the cake. 

I'll have a lot of prep work to do

but I'll be able to enjoy my family while they are all here. 

I have a bunch of old Scrabble tiles that I set up in her honor on a table in the dining room. 

I left plenty of extra letters for folks to add their own words. 

It's strange how we plan out their lives when they are little.

And then they grow up and become people we never could have imagined. 

They surprise us with who they are...who they become. 

My mother used to buy me pink shirts because 

she remembered how much I liked pink.

But I was four then and I don't like it nearly as much as I used to.

I'm not sure if it is possible to truly know your grown children for who they are

because who they are to us gets in the way.

So we have to let go of the little girls who only wore pink shirts

...we pack them away with our other memories...

they mean more to us than they do to our grown children

who, in truth, hardly remember their pink shirt days. 

Happy Birthday my beautiful 

Hannah-banana

Hanny-bannany

Beep-beep

beautiful, brave, brillaint, blue-eyed

daughter of mine.