For my Sweet Sixteen, my mom couldn’t bake me a cake. So my best friend did.

On my sixteenth birthday, I woke to find a wonderful surprise: My friend Mechele had baked me a cake and snuck it into my kitchen. Next to the note wishing me a Happy Birthday, she even left me matches for the candles.

That was cool. 

Living in the same town again after I graduated college.

Especially since a few months earlier my mother had died, so this was the first birthday morning I didn’t jump out of bed. Knowing my father did’t care to celebrate birthdays, I wasn’t sure there was anything worth jumping out of bed for.

But Mechele made sure there was. And though she couldn’t spend the day with me, she made it a very Sweet Sixteen.

For another birthday about 10 years later she played Mom again when I was living in Chile. She sent me a care package with books, treats and something only Mechele would think to mail me. After I told her I was spending a lot of time with a sexy Australian guy and could not find a store that sold contraceptives, Mechele sent me condoms that made another birthday celebration possible. 

A few years after that, she sent me another Mom-style gift I still have. When I moved to Seattle and told her how many sweaters and long johns I was buying to adjust to the cold, she sent me a care package with a cozy and colorful blanket she knitted.

Today, that afghan lies on my bed and Mechele still sends me packages of things I “need,” which these days is nothing more than a box of salted caramels. But next time I need something more important, I know Mechele will put it in the mail for me.

December 2022 love gift from Mechele: Some of the delicious honey her backyard bees made.