My mother had her 70^th birthday. When my father asked her, whether she has a special wish where to go for her birthday dinner, she defiantly replied that she does not want to go for dinner but would like to have an orienteering race. I once gave her a forest orienteering run for her name day during the summer holidays. Back then, she was 36 years old, it was summer and warm.

Now it is January with icy minus ten degrees Celsius in Prague and I am living in Zurich. My father called me and I spontaneously agreed without knowing what it means. Fine, I will organise an orienteering race for her. That was 5 days before her birthday.

I booked the first flight on Saturday morning to Prague and told my mum by phone that she will get her orienteering race on Sunday and that, as agreed, I won’t come since we will celebrate Easter together.

It was a hectic week and organising a fun orienteering race for a fit 70-years-old lady is a time-consuming and demanding task.

The entire Saturday and Sunday I ran countless kilometres in Prague, in order to set the stations with instruction envelopes for my mother. The surprising thing was that everyone participated. The lady in the flower shop, the sales assistant in a boutique, in the restaurant, in the national theatre, in the gallery. I could successfully place all envelopes!

The evening before, my mother received the order to pick up the first envelope in a boutique at ten o’clock. I had also scheduled coffee breaks and lunch. And I really racked my brains about the time management. The heart of the orienteering race was an opera performance at 2pm in the beautiful national theatre, including a backstage tour.

My mother did the tour alone and I checked the stations by phone and additionally distributed small presents. At every station she received a small present. In the theatre I sat on the balcony and watched her in the third row far below me on the ground floor. After the theatre the next station was a café, where she should get coffee and cake and I wanted to sit there and wait for her.

So I was sitting in the café and waiting. The biggest problem was that my mother was doing the stations far too fast and arrived up to half an hour earlier than I had expected. Now I was waiting and she did not come! We had agreed that she would send me a text message if something should go wrong. And now I received the text message.

“I am sitting in the café and nobody is coming as promised. Shall I go home?”

I looked around me but could not see my mother. Had she gone to the wrong café? I got up and went to the door. Suddenly I saw her hidden in a corner. I had not noticed her coming.

My mother was shocked and overjoyed at the same time to see me. She was filled with the impressions of the day and told me how great it had been and what the people had said and that everyone had congratulated her and when she stopped talking, she took my hand and started to cry. She was overjoyed and me as well.

She was touched to have such a great daughter and I was touched to have such a great mother. Isn’t it wonderful and a big joy to have each other?

Just the last station, the dinner together, she did not want anymore. She had walked the entire distance (which was respectable) and had taken hardly any breaks. Now she was exhausted from walking in the icy but sunny January weather of Prague and from the unexpected emotional events.

She said that she would not be able to sleep that evening. But I could see that she would immediately fall asleep, if she lay down. And like that it was, as my father confirmed.

May my great mother live long, even if she does not run all races until the home straight.