Birthdays are big at my house

Birthdays are big at my house. When your day comes along you are king or queen for a day, week, or maybe a whole month depending on your age. Month-long celebrations are for important events, like becoming a teenager or the change of a decade.
I think this all started when I was a kid growing up on a wheat farm in eastern Colorado. I had five sisters, both parents and Grandma down the road, and since there were so many of us, we were treated to wondrous things on each birthday.
My mother would spend time figuring out what to give as a gift, and then she would create it from her own handiwork. (She was a superb seamstress, often winning the champion sewing ribbon at the Kit Carson County fair.) Most memorable for me were the Native American clothing she came up with.
The most treasured one I received was a chief’s feathered headdress. I don’t know where she got a pattern for that one, but it was something! A red band held individual white turkey feathers that flowed around my head and down the back. Silver buttons were at my temples, and strips of real leather hung from them. I thought I had died and gone to heaven, and I must have worn it to shreds because one day it just disappeared. I suspect Mom removed it from our house while I was asleep.
Hand-decorated birthday cakes were part of the celebration, too. She would ask us what we wanted, and there was no disappointment, because our wish was her command. I always chose chocolate and loved to watch her decorate it. She could create all kinds of decorative ornaments with a silver decorating tube. First, she would mix up a bunch of white frosting and divide it into little bowls. Then came the tiny bottles of food coloring. “What color do want the flowers?” she would ask. Often, my answer was yellow because I think yellow looks great on brown icing. Of course, there was green for the leaves, and maybe one bowl left white for some ribbons. She would fit the flower head on the tube and fill it with the yellow frosting before the plunger was screwed on the bottom. Then, poised over the cake, I would watch as flower after flower appeared on the chocolate palette before us. On she would go, changing the head of the tube from flowers to leaves to ribbons, and ending with a grand flourish of spectacular ribbons around the bottom and top.
Candles. Song. Wish. Blow. Gifts. Queen for a day.
Yep, birthdays are important at my house.    

At his request, I made a strawberry pie for Dwight's birthday.