Anna wanted to cry. Right in front of her was a cake, a beautiful, delicious white chocolate and strawberry cake, topped with thirty candles—no more, no less—just thirty straight candles illuminating the entire room that was once shrouded in darkness.

The sound of her family and two best friends, Julia and Dalia, singing that birthday song should have turned those tears into streams of joy, yet the one that came trickling out of her eye right now was of sadness, of a sense of failure, as her entire thirty years of life was reflected right before her eyes, like an open storybook.

She bit her lip and stared at the candlelight dancing in front of her, those flames providing just enough light to illuminate the many smiling faces that now stared back at her—the faces of her many nephews, eyeing her weirdly, not understanding why their aunt would be fabricating mass saltwater production down her cheeks; her cousins and their husbands, holding each other’s hands, eyeing her with mixed feelings of sadness because they seemed to know what she was going through, since they were of similar age; and then her mother and father, hugging each other at their ripe old age, looking at her worriedly.

Anna took all of this in. And then a painful cord struck through her heart and she reached a moment of epiphany, that single moment when she finally realized what everyone was talking about for the past two decades.

Love. Marriage. Family. Children.

Too busy was she trying to achieve her status, her career, and her reputation that she had totally forgotten all about that other important aspect of her life: love.

Sifting through her memories, Anna tried to place any fond memory where she was actually in love with someone. Her mind drew a blank. There was none, nothing, a big fat zero, just a single goose egg. She had never had her first kiss, never had her first dance at a formal during high school, never went to a nightclub, never had a boyfriend, never had or experienced anything that a girl her age should have done while growing up.

In her entire thirty years of life, she had been working. In high school, she spent her days working, if not studying. When she finally entered university, again she was so busy studying and working she had forgotten to go to the annual dental ball, forgot to look around her as her other classmates eyed each other across the room and asked one another on dates. And even after she graduated from dentistry, she still forgot to have fun, forgot to go out and celebrate her success at achieving such a high degree. And now she was about to enter the big three-zero zone. By midnight tonight, she would be officially a spinster, on the shelf, tough as leather.

Who would want to chew this tough beef anyway, when everyone at the supermarket would go for the veal?

To say she never had any interaction with the opposite sex was also preposterous, because she had. Growing up, she had always been surrounded with her many nephews, cousins, her male classmates, and now her patients also, but to associate them with the Lword, now that would be preposterous. Although she did have many proposals, ranging from eight-year-old boys to eighty-six-year-old men, namely her patients, how could she take any of them seriously?

Her biological clock was screaming at her. Her hormones were on rampage as tears streamed down her face and all those thoughts spun through her mind. She couldn’t suppress them. She hadn’t hit menopause yet, but here she was having an emotional breakdown because she was turning thirty and wanted a family of her own. That sudden feeling of wanting another person there at night, lying close to you while you rest. Yes, that strong yearning suddenly hitting her like a ton of bricks, and she couldn’t help but burst out and cry even harder.

Anna’s mother, Montha, sensing something was horribly wrong, came to comfort her daughter.

“What’s wrong, Anna? Why are you crying on your birthday?” she asked, patting her daughter’s back. Dalia and Julia came to her side also. Their singing faltered and they stared dumbfounded when they saw her in this state.

How could she tell her mother and the rest of her family and friends that she wanted her own family, that she wanted love? But it was too late now. No man would even look at her. She had passed her prime.