Shifting Gears   Baby Boomer…Member Life 2.0…Wife, Mother, Grammie…Bicyclist…GoldWinger…Mensan…Girl Scout…Reader…Knitter…Rotarian

A year ago I listed 44 reasons why I love my daughter Tammy and while she deserves another round of 44 – plus one for another year of life – I’m not about to start a trend! 

Today is her birthday and soon I will call her at 11:42 a.m. to celebrate that moment when she arrived in my world which thankfully has never been the same since.

This year we celebrated on Friday with a Mom/Daughter birthday lunch.  We rarely go out to lunch together and I was excited when she chose Ocean Zen since it’s one of my local favorites.  Her friend, Sarah, suggested we lunch as the French do – a glass of white wine, a salad, and then dessert.  While my French vocabulary doesn’t get much past asking for a beer or where to find a bathroom, I was happy to oblige the lunch idea.

Tammy ordered a pinot grigio and I opted for a Chardonnay and it was fun to just sit and visit and not feel rushed since neither of us had an agenda for the afternoon.  Ocean Zen recently added a lunch special of salad and sushi and naturally that called our name – we both liked the strawberry salad which had assorted greens, fresh strawberries, pecans and goat cheese in a light dressing and we chose the spicy tuna roll for our sushi.  By time we finished, we were unsure about the dessert part and a glance at their dessert menu confirmed we weren’t ready – nothing on the menu just tripped our trigger so I suggested we do a little shopping and then stop in at a new cupcake place downtown.

Our first stop was at The Harem where Tammy works part-time as their marketing manager.  The owner, Kathi, was celebrating her birthday so we gave her our best wishes and had a small piece of her chocolate cake with raspberry filling – quite tasty!  Tomorrow Tammy gets her cake at work and it will be lemon – I may have to find an excuse to be in that area tomorrow afternoon. 

Then we went downtown to 3House Boutique to check on their new merchandise.  I bought a couple of items there last fall when they first opened but nothing caught my fancy on this trip.  Tammy picked up a couple of cute tees and we were off.  Next stop was a new little vintage store called A Cricket In The House which had some great vintage items from the 50s, 60s and 70s along with very reasonable prices.  I picked up a couple of darling melamine bowls covered in a watermelon print and think I know a couple of little girls from Des Moines who will be eating homemade ice cream from them this weekend.

We headed down the street to The Cup for our dessert which more than exceeded our expectations.  Tammy got the orange creme which actually had a creme filling and I naturally had the chocolate peanut butter (with broken pieces of Reese’s on top) because NOTHING is better than chocolate and peanut butter combined.

On our way home we stopped at another little shop called Pickwick House which is near the old Pickwick Place where my girls loved to shop when they were kids.  It was only a few blocks from our house and they felt so grown up when I’d let them walk up there and look around the store.  Pickwick House is full of eclectic furniture and home decorating items and it was fun to browse.

I did give Tammy one of her gifts on Friday but I made sure she opened it at home and didn’t take it with her!  She had requested Erik Larsson’s new bestseller “Garden of the Beasts” and while her manners are impeccable, I didn’t want her to get bored with me and start reading at lunch!  Naturally she picked up on my ulterior motive – the sooner she reads it, the sooner she will pass it along to me so I can read it!

We had a great afternoon together and I’m so thankful to have such a beautiful, loving, funny, talented, polite daughter.  Her abilities never cease to amaze me and yet, I know how dedicated she is to her metalsmithing and what she achieves comes with a lot of hard work.

She has blessed me in ways I could never have imagined 45 years ago today – here’s to you Tammy and thanks for all the memories so far and the ones left for us to create together.

I love you more than life itself.