Mom’s Ninetieth at the Front Window

The first cup

Then my mother did something I will remember for the rest of my life.

She put her hand on the coffee pot Raymond had left by her plate. She lifted it. It was full and heavy, and her wrist is ninety years old, and I got up and went to stand at the end of the table, ready to help her.

“Stay right there, Corrine,” she said. “I’ve got it.”

She stood up. In her cranberry dress with her mother’s cameo at the collar, with her white curls catching the noon light from that big front window, she stood up at the head of the table and she poured.

She poured her oldest friend’s cup first, because they had known each other the longest. Then each of the other ladies. Then my husband’s and mine. Then my brother’s, when he came back and sat down. Then Tiffani’s.

She did not skip Tiffani. She did not slow down at her cup, or speed up either. She poured it the same as all the others, full to a finger below the rim, the way she was taught in 1953.

Then she poured Brooklyn’s last. Brooklyn does not even drink coffee. She drank every drop.

“There,” Mom said, and set the pot down, and sat. “Now it’s a party.”

Raymond was standing in the kitchen doorway with his arms crossed over his apron, and I saw him wipe his eye with the back of his wrist and pretend it was the onions.

The cake

When the plates were cleared, Raymond brought the little cake down the table and looked it over.

He had his lighter in his hand. Then he stopped and looked at the cake, and looked at Mom, and scratched his head.

“Billie,” he said. “I’ll be honest with you. Ninety candles won’t fit on this cake. I tried it this morning. It looked like a porcupine and the frosting started to melt.”

Everybody laughed.

“So what did you do?” Mom asked.

“So I lit nine,” he said. “One for every ten years. Mom always said you were worth ten of anybody else.”

He lit them one at a time. Nine little flames standing up straight in the still air of the cafe, with the sun coming through the window behind them.

We sang. The four ladies sang high and a little behind the beat, the way church ladies sing. My brother sang low. Brooklyn sang loudest of all. Even Tiffani sang, quietly, looking at the table.

A man at the counter turned around on his stool and sang along, and then the two farmers in the corner booth did too, and by the end the whole cafe was singing happy birthday to Billie Saathoff.

Mom closed her eyes before she blew. She held them closed for a long moment, longer than a wish usually takes. I have always wondered if it was a prayer.

Then she blew, and all nine went out on the first try.