Dad’s Birthday

One day, on a cold July 10th, a family was going to celebrate a birthday that had to be perfect because it was the father´s 40th birthday. The whole family was preparing gifts and the father was extremely excited.

A week before the birthday, the family was preparing the gifts. The first one the family was preparing was writing letters, yes, letters. The family wrote to all of their friends and made them appear as if they had been sent by mail. The family finished it and, it took a lot of work. The family finally finished the documents and stamped the envelopes to look official. It was all a procedure at first, the middle son made the letters, the mother pasted the names and the addresses and, finally, the great-great-grandmother pasted the stamps. A true team effort!

The eldest son recorded a video with all the friends and family. Everyone had to say happy birthday and blew out a candle. He included classic put up 80's commercials for his dad as well. Then the family ordered sublime, brownies, and also ordered a custard apple cake. The mom rented a grill and a gigantic pot that takes a lot of heat but serves to fry and cook. Also, the mom asked for a shelf that held all the sweets and brownies.

It was so perfect and then everything started to go wrong. First the shelves fell and broke. Later, the posters they had bought, they had been torn from the wind and the shelf that held the brownies crashed down! Everything was a disaster, but why?! Because they had tried so hard to make everything perfect, that it became a catastrophe.

They had forgotten that a birthday has the most important ingredients already. On a birthday, you just must have love and affection. You can obviously make a nice birthday, but never forget that the most important thing is family and friendship, because the family had focused on the event rather than the person, it had fallen apart.

Then everything became worse because the grill got on fire, while they tried to stop the fire, the dog saw its opportunity and ate all the sweets. Besides, they only had one day but they realized not everything has to be perfect and they started again and even did better than they were doing.

They began the day over again and this time focused on the love of being altogether. First, they prepared the brownies, then they fixed the shelves and the grill. They ran to the bodega and bought some candies and repaired the birthday decorations. The letters were written again, and everything was the same as before.

Dad had a great birthday, everything was amazing. They surprised dad and they sang happy birthday to him and he was overly excited. Afterwards he celebrated all afternoon and had an unbelievably delicious lunch. The family stayed the whole day together. They saw old friends and distant family over Zoom. The family stayed up together until one in the morning and everyone had an unforgettable day.