wine and cheap perfume

So my mom just turned sixty. This makes me feel old. This makes me feel like I should have accomplished more. Her birthday dinner broke my heart. After her friends each delivered these perfect, heart-warming toasts, all which steered clear of schmalz, my father surprised me more than I ever imagined possible. My dad is a football-watching, weight-lifting, big, burly, surly cave-man-esque feller, who has little to no patience for sentimentality. When it was his turn to toast her, he said, "You know, every morning, I get up early, and I make the coffee, and I get the paper. Then Susan comes in with a big smile on her face. It's the best thing in the world. I just look at her and I know, 'This is what life's all about.' And that's when I'm happiest."
I couldn't believe it. My mom started crying but pretended not to, quickly sweeping the tears from her eyes, tell-tale streaks of mascara parading crookedly down her cheeks.
All of their friends just stared at him in disbelief. It was as though he had just confessed that he was an avid lover of astrology, or that he was gay (which, I suppose, are synonymous). It was as though he confessed that for the past thirty years, he's been a devout Scientologist, that he's pro-life, or that he knows all the words to Nick Lachey's latest album by heart. I had never seen my dad make such an explicitly sentimental and candid display, and it was strange and beautiful. I cried too. It could have been because I was drunk, it could have been because I was shocked, it could have been because it's been a long time since someone made such an intimate declaration about me, in a private or public context. It was just this perfect moment in time, my parents both gazing at each other, food on their shirts, teeth stained black from the nineteen bottles of red wine that they had consumed, as if they couldn't fathom a more ethereal beauty than that they saw in each other.