A Special Birthday Surprise

I love birthdays!  It doesn't even have to be mine.  If I can make someone's birthday special, it gives me such a thrill.  My mother always made our birthday a special day.  New outfit, got to pick what we wanted for dinner and pick what kind of birthday cake we wanted and then grandparents, aunts and uncles, neighbors and cousins all came for dinner.  When I turned nine I got a real, honest-to-goodness, invite your friends  birthday party.  I was so excited!  How could a girl's birthday get any better?
I talked a little before about my maternal grandparents and how special they were to me.  But the sun rose and set in my fraternal grandfather as far as my big brother and I were concerned.  He passed away when I was twelve but the twelve years he was in my life, well...I just never will forget.
Grandpa was an umpire.  He would take my brother and I to the baseball games and sit us behind home plate with a hotdog and a coke.  I can picture him today in all that black umpire stuff they had to wear, turning around to check on us every chance he got.  Sunday afternoons at his house was spent with him and I sitting in his big chair watching a baseball game on TV with our eyes closed.  Sort of like my husband does now.  After he retired, he bought a hotel.  So consequently, baseball and hotels are in my blood.  It's no wonder I ended up working for two major hotel chains.   Oh, and did I tell you he could do magic?  The first thing my brother and I did when he walked in the door was ask him to make a quarter appear behind our ears.  Amazing!!  I am also convinced that he knew Santa on a personal basis because we always got everything on our list.
So just when a little girls birthday couldn't get better, guess who showed up?  That was the best part of the whole day.  I loved him so very much and I miss him.