The best gift ever: Cuyahoga Falls mom and daughter share Mother's Day birthdays

As 38-year-old Eva Mae Brown got in the backseat of a taxi cab on Mother’s Day in 1968, bearing labor pains, she felt excitement at the possibility of having her only daughter on her own birthday.

“The taxi cab driver kept looking in the mirror and looking really nervous,” Eva said. “He was afraid I was gonna have the baby in the car.”

Angela Brown, now 56, was born in Akron City Hospital on May 12 in the same hospital as her mom. The mother-daughter pair share a birthday, and a birthplace.

As if that isn’t special enough, their birthday falls on Mother’s Day again this year, in what could be Eva’s last birthday and Mother’s Day celebration.

Eva Mae Brown, who turns 93 on May 12, was born in 1931 in Akron City Hospital. She grew up in Deerfield in Portage County,  where she was part of the last graduating class of Deerfield High School. She is the mother of two sons, David and Daniel, and one daughter, Angela, and grandmother to five granddaughters.

Eva is currently in hospice care for heart failure. Her health first began to decline when Angela was in high school, and has been gradually declining since.

Angela, who has cared for Eva since her health first began to decline, said the hardest part of Eva’s hospice care is not knowing what’s coming next. But Eva is at peace with what's to come.

“It could be today. It could be tomorrow,” Angela said. “She's fine with it all. She knows she's going to heaven. And you know, when your time comes, she's ready to go because she has so much pain.”

Before Eva’s health declined, their shared birthday was spent going to the Cathedral Royal Buffet. In recent years, Angela has invited polka bands to Eva’s house, for her to enjoy from the comfort of her home.

To celebrate Eva’s 93rd birthday this year, and what could be her last Mother's Day, Angela hired an Italian accordion player. Eva's 90-year-old brother came to visit Saturday and enjoy the music alongside her.

‘She always put her children’s first’

Independence is one thing that Eva instilled in her children. She raised her three kids as a single mother and provided for them in every way she could.

“She was two,” Angela said. “She always puts her children first. She put me first. She was a good provider, she just made sure everything I needed, I had.”

When she went into labor with Angela, Eva called herself a cab and went to the hospital alone to deliver her daughter.

Before Eva’s health declined, she worked many jobs over her lifetime. Before she had children, she attended the University of Akron and then decided to move to Chicago and, eventually, Hollywood.

During her time in Hollywood, she even got to have an Elvis Presley encounter. He pulled up in a convertible next to her on the sidewalk, she said.

“They had a lot of kids that ran after him,” Eva said. “But I just went on my way.”

Angela said Eva never asked anyone for help but found ways to provide for her family.

“We never asked anybody for a dime for anything,” Angela said. “If we had to go to a food bank, we’d walk. We’d walk to church. We walked to the grocery store. But that’s what she instilled in me, to be strong and independent.”

Angela, mother to one daughter, Ashley, said she instilled that same sense of independence into her own daughter, who moved to Atlanta on her own to work as a respiratory therapist.

“That's one thing she's instilled in me, and I taught my daughter the same thing,” she said.

When Angela was young, Eva would frequently dance and sing with her, which Angela continued to do when raising her own daughter.

“She would always sing and rock me and read books to me,” Angela said. “She was always involved in any activities I had. So I made sure I did that with my daughter.”

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Cuyahoga Falls mom and daughter share Mother's Day birthdays