While I am unable to celebrate your birthday with you, I did however make you a delicious birthday cake in honor of your universal debut. I prepared a chocolate and vanilla mint chip ice cream cake with a cookie and caramel filling. The ice cream is Breyers and the cookies are Oreos. Obviously, the caramel is homemade. I wouldn’t dream of offering you store-bought caramel. It’s made with sugar, heavy cream, unsalted butter, and a pinch or two of salt. The best part of this cake is that the caramel stays soft, smooth, and creamy in every bite.
You are truly a remarkable woman. Your heart, your all-encompassing smile, your ability to see the world around you, and your extraordinary capacity to love are just a few tracts I will always love about you. You continuously hold your head up in the face of bigotry, relentless persecution, ridicule, unfairness, unkindness, and hatred. I know it isn’t easy even for the toughest amongst us; yet, you stand up and you keep on going. You go on, because giving up isn’t who you choose to be. In the face of hopelessness you may falter or even doubt your purpose, but you reach down and find that burning will to survive. 
I don’t know if you always feel loved or deserving of love or worthy of love. I don’t know if you understand how special you are and how good you are. The wrong people sometimes enter our lives just to bring us to our knees. Some throw stones to see how many blows we can endure before we shatter while others wish our demise. When you have so much against you, you can’t avoid being blemished by it and it affects how you think of yourself. My heart weeps a day for every moment you’ve spent feeling inadequate and undeserving of love. Being this incredibly gifted singer, performer, actress, dancer, and humanitarian doesn’t begin to tell the story of what an amazing woman you are. No amount of awards, fame, or success will ever reflect the wonderment that is you.
What makes you the woman I will always love and support is the way your hands sit hand-in-hand nurturing each other as to say don’t worry Jan, we will get through this moment together, the way you gently bit the inside of your lip as you examine the interviewer trying to figure out where he/she is taking you with the next question and if you are okay with it, the way you slightly lean back, lift your head up and inhale with an approving blink or two to relay this is the appropriate path, the nervous impulse to tug your ear or flip your hair back even when it’s sitting comfortably behind your shoulder or to the side of your face, your uneasiness when receiving a compliment, your laughter and the way you try to hold back when you think it is too big, the shyness your smile tries desperately to conceal, the story your eyes tell including the stories filled with anguish, the way your spirit encapsulate the room, the way you let others shine around you, the whisper of your voice and the inner fellow “sista” voice I secretly desire to slip out from time to time; LOL, and the way your eyes seek the right words to express your thoughts.
You are deserving of every bounty of love your heart can carry. This birthday and every day forward, I want you to carry the love I have for you in your heart so that you will always know no matter how dark the darkness becomes, no matter how long the darkness last, there is someone out there in this hellish world that loves you completely and will love you through anything. I want you to know your music, your song, your dance and your talent isn’t what makes you precious, it’s simply you.
You are irreplaceable.
You are special.
You are deserving.
You are worthy.
You are kind.
You are resilient.
You are strength.
You are courage.
Yes Janet, you are good enough.
You are beautiful.
And most importantly, you are loved.
Happy Birthday Janet. I love you.
For a man, 90 minutes is more than enough, but for a woman even with the bath completed, we need 2 hours at least. Nevertheless, 90 minutes is what I had and I was going to be ready one way or another. Just imagine if I had of gone with my first thought to stay at a different hotel, I really would have been in trouble.
She’d already looked at me several times, sent a heart my way and I’d yet to blow her a kiss. Now she was saying good-bye and I’m still standing there contemplating if I should. Finally, I said if she looks my way once more, I’m blowing her a kiss even if she doesn’t acknowledge it, I’d have the satisfaction of knowing I did. She ran up the stairs for a final farewell and waved to one side. She then turned in our direction, said “God Bless” and just as she said “be safe”, I was absolutely positive she was looking at me. So I blew a kiss and she blew one back!!! She said a couple more things to the audience, but my heart was already on the floor. It was a perfect way to end a perfect night. I’m still on clouds 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. 
