Today is my mother's birthday, so I arrived home with flowers, chocolates and cake. This morning over breakfast she was all "you'd think your brother would call his mother on her birthday". So I decided to send him an e-mail saying "call mom".
By coincidence this evening, just as I was lighting candles on the cake, my brother calls me and says "thanks for the heads-up. Put the phone on speaker so I can sing Happy Birthday as well". So we all burst into the room in a flurry of cake, candles, phone and song, and my mother started crying and says "oh my God, you never call me!" I often forget that she is suffering too.
Afterwards, she said "I'm happy now" and thanked me for organising the whole thing. She actually used the term "wonderful"...I found it almost shocking.
Honestly, it took such a small effort to arrange everything. It's the little things that make a big difference. Maybe I will become a spirit-lifting, mood-elevating, cheer-engineering dynamo. Brightening someone else's day requires far less effort than you'd think.
Also, we are fighting a lot less these days. I don't know if it's to do with the fact that I have a job now, or I'm just not rising to the bait...
Either way, it's good. I'm home eating cheesecake and watching Britain's Got Talent. I have my new book for later. It's peaceful. I guess there are worse ways to spend a Saturday night.