Birthdays

My family has one tradition that is extremely important, even sacred, to us: the birthday cake.

For every person's birthday, we need to serve the Jamocha Almond Fudge Ice Cream birthday cake, made by the local Baskin Robbins ice cream store. It has always been so, since my oldest brother was born, and as long as those types of cakes are available we will be eating that. We've never intentionally chosen to eat or serve any other type of cake.

People who are aware of our tradition have asked why does it need to be that cake? Clearly none of us need to answer them because they've never eaten the Jamocha Almond Fudge Ice Cream cake. You probably haven't either. Just understand: it is amazing.

A few years ago, the ice cream shops was out of cakes; so were the other stores on the island of Montreal. My middle brother understood that it wasn't any of our faults that we didn't get him the right cake, but we still didn't feel like it was the right type of birthday. As soon as the store had some new cakes in stock, we bought one, invited the whole family together and then re-celebrated his birthday anew.

We like to joke that we're the only reason that the ice cream store, Baskin Robbins, is still in business.

This is a very lose way of saying that it's a family members birthday:

Happy Birthday Thomas!