cat named pig

My mom turned sixty last week. (She might not appreciate me posting her age on the internet; maybe she won’t mind so much if I also say she looks younger than sixty?) My brother (Siena and Elliot’s beloved Tio Matt) flew in from LA as a surprise, and the look on my mom’s face when she first saw him is something I hope never to forget.

I am horrible at surprises; I typically get so excited I just ask the person if they want to know what the surprise is (usually Matt, who rolls his eyes and says “NO”) or I mismanage the details of the planning so they (Matt again) end up being only partially surprised, like “well, I knew something was going on but I didn’t know exactly where we were going, so you kind of surprised me.” In fact, I would say I am only slightly better than Siena at not giving away a surprise. (Every year since she could talk, she’s told me exactly what she and Matt bought me for Christmas. Usually within minutes of them getting home from the store.)

So it was pretty great that we actually pulled it off.

My mom didn’t make it easy on us, because she got sick the day we were going to have her over for the surprise and tried to get out of it. I had asked her to come over after work and watch the kids, saying Matt had a work meeting and my friend Sara had asked me to go to some event with her. When my mom called to say she was sick, my brother and I were in the middle of planning exactly how we were going to surprise her when she showed up to “babysit.” We freaked out for a minute, then I called her back.

I offered to bring over soup; she turned me down because she didn’t want us to catch whatever she had (nevermind that she probably got it from us in the first place, given the winter that we’ve had).

I asked if she could just stop by briefly after work; she hadn’t gone to work because she was too sick.

I finally told her we wanted to give her a birthday present a day early, and could we just stop by with it (and some soup)? She asked if it could “keep.” 

“No, it can’t really,” I answered, hoping she wouldn’t press for any more details. She finally agreed to let us stop by, but not without warning me that it was almost rush hour, and did I really want to deal with the traffic on the way down? I assured her I didn’t care about the traffic and we were on our way.

As we turned onto her street, I called her and said her present was rather large and heavy — could she open the front door for us? She opened it to see my brother getting out of the car, and just about fell over. It was perfect. She was definitely surprised.

We had a big birthday dinner the following night, complete with champagne and one of each dessert item on the menu, and then I proceeded to come down with whatever had been making my mom sick. Go figure. (It appears I have the immune system of a woman nine times my age and should probably live in a bubble. At least until spring.) But the birthday celebration was awesome, and seeing my brother was great. And if your birthday is coming up, watch out. Because I have totally mastered this surprise thing.