4th of July birthday

Today is my grown up daughter's birthday.
She was born in the Bicentennial year in one of the 12 original colonies at 12:03 AM.
She and I have lamented how different her life would have turned out if she had been born 3 minutes earlier.
That particular year, the state of New Hampshire gave the first born Bicentennial baby a huge advantage for the future. Scholarships, money, diapers for life etc....
But, as it turns out, she was born 3 minutes too late.
We had to be ordinary people, live ordinary lives as the mother and daughter who met each other 3 minutes too late.
We struggled along thru the years, never having any money, never having enough time together after her 4th year of life. (thats when I started working 3 jobs)
The time we did spend together was wonderful tho...walks to the park, public library, baking cookies, pies, bread.
Our best times were spent foraging in the woods for berries and herbs.
We picked blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and blackberries.
We walked along fall paths so brilliant with yellow and orange leaves that we had to wear sunglasses.
The apartments and houses we lived in were not always great but we filled them up with our favorite things. We tried to ignore the the lack of necessities and dodged the bad things. Too many bad things.
I hope I did allright.
I hope she loved me despite the fact that I worked too many hours and was not there for her all the time.
I love her, I'm proud of her.
She turned out to be a great mama.
She bakes cookies too.
Happy birthday darling.