I Bought Myself a Birthday Cake — and Ended Up with Something Better

I woke up to the quiet. No phone buzzing, no cards slipped under the door, no voices singing. My small room above the hardware store held only the usual things — a narrow bed, an old kettle, and my chair by the window. That window is my favorite. From there, I can see the buses come and go.

At the bakery, the girl behind the counter didn’t seem to know me, though I’ve been a regular for years. I told her it was my birthday. She gave a polite smile. I bought a little vanilla cake with strawberries and had her write in icing: Happy 97th, Mr. L.

Back in my room, I lit a candle, cut myself a slice, and waited — though I couldn’t have told you what for. I haven’t heard from my son, Eliot, in half a decade. The last time we spoke, I told him I thought his wife was speaking down to me. He hung up, and that was the end.

I snapped a picture of the cake, sent it to his old number with the words: Happy birthday to me. No answer. Not then. Not later. I fell asleep in my chair by the window.

A knock woke me. A young woman stood there, phone in hand, eyes uncertain. “Are you Mr. L?” she asked. “I’m Nora. Eliot’s daughter.”

I could barely speak. She told me she’d found my number in her father’s phone after seeing my message. She brought a turkey-and-mustard sandwich — my favorite. We sat at my crate-table, shared cake, and talked about her dad’s boyhood, my old garden, and why Eliot and I hadn’t spoken. I told her pride can be a wall that’s hard to climb. She nodded.

Before she left, she asked if she could visit again. I told her she’d better. The room felt different after that — lighter somehow.

The next morning, a message from Eliot: Is she okay?

I wrote back: She’s wonderful.

A few days later, another knock. This time, it was Eliot himself. “I wasn’t sure you’d open the door,” he said.

“Neither was I,” I told him. But I did.

We didn’t fix everything that day. But we began.

If you’ve been holding back, maybe today’s the day to reach out. Sometimes love doesn’t return the way we expect — but it can come back, in a knock, a message, or the face of someone new who remembers what matters.