birthday season shopping with Sharon

I took my daughter shopping Memorial Day weekend and said, “It’s early, but this is your birthday gift. Today I buy for you.” We shopped until we dropped.
That weekend she returned from her Saturday date with her dad loaded with chips, candy and gum. She had convinced her father he should buy her munchies for camp as a birthday gift.
We agreed she had had her birthday gifts. I promised to bring a cake when we went to a family weekend at camp where she was going to work. The Monday before her birthday, she left for camp and I left for New Orleans to celebrate my son’s birthday on Wednesday. He had elected to find a summer job away from home. He ended up with his brother and sister-in-love, Alexis. When I arrived, he gave me his sister’s gift to take back to her.
No early gifts for him, though. I still had to shop for the camera he wanted, make his cake and birthday supper. Tuesday, while I shopped he was out driving an ice cream truck: the kind that plays a merry little tune as the driver rings a bell to announce his arrival with frozen treats.
Wednesday, we had a half-hour at breakfast before he loaded his new camera and went to play Pied Pipe with an ice cream truck.
Then I took over the kitchen, prepared the birthday supper, baked a low-fat banana cake, washed his clothes and went grocery shopping with Alexis.
As I wandered by the bakery, an enticing caramel smell led me to a cake topped with nuts, drizzled liberally with chocolate syrup and frosted on the sides with caramel. Forget the low-fat cake, I bought it.
Somehow, I managed to not start eating that cake before he came back from work an hour before bed time. We quickly sang the birthday song, let him blow out the candles and helped him with the cake. It was delicious. The banana cake became a breakfast muffin substitute.
Thursday, the birthday boy heard of a job back home. He decided to come with me, apply for the job and personally give his gifts to his sister. We dragged in late Thursday.
Friday, he landed a job and I groggily prepared to go to camp. Between cleaning, packing and reading mail, I baked frosted brownies loaded with nuts and chips for my daughter’s birthday on Saturday.
My husband and I were almost halfway to camp when I realized I had left the birthday brownies and candles on the counter. We stopped at a bakery in the next town to buy another cake.
No candles, but she loved the carefully lit matches and free-standing candle, shrieked with laughter at the funny gifts Alexis had sent and liberally shared her cake with co-workers.
Sunday she came home to rest for a day, have me wash her clothes and receive her presents from her brother and get her other cake. She laughed at the can of Spam and squealed with delight at the orange fingernail polish he had selected, then sat down to paint her nails, orange, green and yellow. After two weeks of presents, she declared, “This has been the greatest birthday ever.”