“No need to be unkind about anybody.”

“Fair enough.”

For dessert, she had insisted on making her own birthday cake.

She chose a simple vanilla sponge with strawberries, a little cream, and a border of blue stars so crooked they looked almost deliberate.

We ate it at the kitchen table.

No caterers.

No photographers asking for six different angles.

No one pretending that family labor was free simply because it came with love.