At first glance, my mom is a small and silent Japanese woman. In most social situations, she is very quiet. Maybe it's her lack of self-confidence in carrying on a conversation in English (even though she's lived in the United States for more than half of her life and she is perfectly capable), but either way she is usually observing and soaking in her surroundings.
For those that know my mother, she is quite a character. She's a wonderful cook, a fan of any baseball team with a Japanese player, a Tetris/old school Super Mario Bros. master (SERIOUSLY!), and an amazing mother. Oh, and she's beautiful.
It wasn't until recently that I started thinking about how amazing my mom really is. You see, I'm 23 years old now, and I've been really thinking about how I'm such a homebody. I'm the type of person that could never leave my hometown of Montebello. My family is here, it's 7 minutes away from CSULA (my school), 15 minutes away from downtown Los Angeles...it's home. My whole life is here.
On the other hand, my mother left Japan at the age of 25 to marry my dad. They met while he was stationed in Japan in the Air Force, and they continued to write to each other even after he moved back home. She says that you can tell a lot about someone's character based on their words, and that's what she fell in love with. She fell in love with a man halfway across the world, and she left everything and everyone that she knew behind, all based on my dad's words. And here they are, married more than 30 years later and still going strong.
Sometimes it's easy to forget how brave and amazing my mom is. Her bravery is a quality that I wish I could have.
Anyway, today was her birthday (her 21st birthday, apparently), and since I've been in the baking mood recently, I decided to bake her a cake for her big day! I decided to bake a basic vanilla cake, with alternating layers of matcha cream cheese and banana buttercream in between. I finished it off by covering the cake with a simple whipped cream, strawberry halves and slices of banana.
It was delicious...
お誕生日おめでとう、お母さん <3
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