80 trips around the sun

 Today is my mother's 80th birthday. She is not in a good place right now and it is very hard to be so far from her. This morning though we managed to connect early on whatsapp and talk about happy things like past trips to Italy, rogue cats and cake. The time difference makes things tough, too, so I have felt like a zombie for most of that day but this is a small price to pay to be able to talk to my mama.