𝕋𝕙𝕖𝕪 ℂ𝕒𝕟'𝕥 𝕋𝕒𝕜𝕖 𝕋𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝔸𝕨𝕒𝕪 •𝕁𝔽𝕂•

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 24 - ʙᴇꜱᴛ ʙɪʀᴛʜᴅᴀʏ

(September 12th, 1964)

When I woke up that morning, the bright sunlight was directly falling on my face. It annoyed me. I groaned in frustration and burrowed myself into my silk sheets, trying to go back to the dream that had been so ruthlessly murdered in my subconscious. When, after a few seconds, I couldn't fall back to sleep again, I sat up in bed and stretched my arms as wide as they could reach and rubbed my eyes with my palms, hoping to throw away the remainder of my sleep. My face washed blank with confusion when I saw my two children standing right in front of my bed holding a life size banner, each one holding it with their tiny fingers.

It read Happy Birthday, mama. We love you.

"Oh dear! Caroline! John?Come on! Get in bed with mama!" I bit hard at the insides of my cheeks , hoping that I wouldn't cry in front of these innocent babies but these pregnancy hormones were really making me a cry baby. I had crossed the first trimester successfully and the baby hadn't given me much troubles, I was in the fourth month now and things were slowly starting to mess up. When Caroline and John ran up and jumped into my bed, I was glad for a temporary distraction. I started tickling John and watching me, Caroline also joined me in tickling his brother.

"Who told you it's my birthday today?" I asked my daughter, sweeping my fingers through her now messy hair and sliding her loose strand of blonde hair behind her ear.

"Daddy did." She smiled wide and suddenly, her arms were wrapped around me and she was sitting on my lap, hugging me. When John saw that he wasn't getting any attention, he schooshed himself in between me and Caroline, his tiny hands grabbing my arms for support. Suddenly, the kids started to sing me a broken and tattered happy birthday song.

I snuggled the children closer to me and buried my nose in John's hair, sniffling slightly, in happiness. Once they were done singing, they pulled back from me and John rolled into my silk sheets, playing with it.

"Where is your daddy now?" I asked Caroline. Suddenly, she lifted her finger and pointed towards the wide open door where John Kennedy was leaning against the doorframe with his hands buried in the pockets of his blazer, smiling at me.

"You did all this, didn't you?" I whispered and slid out of the bed, letting Caroline play with John. He stepped inside my bedroom and walked up to me, leaning downwards and quickly pecking me on my lips, "Happy Birthday, Joanna."

I had hardly had a good taste of his lips when he abruptly pushed away, talking in his thick Boston accent, "Well, are you hungry?" The word hungry suddenly registered in my mind and I realized that I was starving.

"Jack, I'm famished, why am I famished?"

"Because you overslept today, it's almost lunch time, Mrs. Kennedy." He informed.

"Is it?" I gasped dramatically and my head yanked towards the clock in my bedroom and a huge frown crossed over my face. "Well.." I sighed.

"Well, I did a little something for you. Caroline and John helped me, off course." Jack smiled and we both glanced at our children who were curled up under my silk sheets.

Jack slid his hands out of his pockets and I watched, with confusion as he walked out of my bedroom and within the next minute, he wheeled in a trolley of food.

"Jack? You did this?" I looked at him, my eyes wide with surprise and a soft smile playing on my lips. He nodded sheepishly and ran his calloused hand through his hair.  He then lifted the lid that was covering the food and the entire room was filled with the aroma. There were lamb chops, mashed potatoes and baked beans. To top that, he had also made sure that my favourite, banana muffins were there on the menu.