Birthday Cake

"I like birthday cake. It's so symbolic ...

it's the emblem of childhood and a happy day."

-- Aimee Bender

Birthday cake 8-18-14

"I think they're going to force us to eat lots of cake 

and then take an unreasonably long nap."

-- Veronica Roth, Insurgent

My husband's birthday was yesterday.

And it got me thinking.

One of my earliest, deepest-seated memories from childhood is from when I turned four.

My birthday is in mid-July and everybody was in the sun-soaked back yard for a cookout -- my sisters, my parents, both sets of grandparents, and our yellow hound dog, Penny.

There's a jumpy Super 8 home move somewhere that documents the following events as they transpired that day -- it's like watching the Kennedy assassination with the sound turned down.

I was wearing a frilly yellow party dress and a cardboard Indian headdress lined with black and white stand-up feathers -- a look which sums me up pretty damned accurately.

I was gleefully riding on the whirly-bird with my sisters, spinning and laughing, when my parents brought out my birthday cake and called everybody over to the picnic table.

It was a bakery cake from Bake-A-Teria, where we always got our birthday cakes, with sugary white icing, my name and the number of years that had elapsed thus far since my birth, piped in baby blue.

I scampered across the lawn. My mother lit the candles. I inhaled a deep chestful of air. I clamped shut my eyes and leaned in to blow out the candles and make my birthday wish when Penny leaped from the grassy knoll onto the picnic table and devoured my entire cake, candles and all, in a series of giant, hungry, chomping, slobbery bites.

I was shell shocked. Stunned. The grownups laughed and tried to make it okay. But it was not okay. It was so, so not fucking okay.

And it wasn't about the lost cake, necessarily. The real tragedy was about the lost wish. Because without a birthday cake there are no birthday candles, and without birthday candles there can be no birthday wish. 

Then there was the time we were driving home from Bake-A-Teria with my sister Alicen's birthday cake. It was in the era before children had to be strapped into seat belts and Alicen was standing, holding onto the back of the driver's seat head rest. Her cake, in it's box with the see-through cellophane window, was on the seat behind her. When Dad had to suddenly hit the brakes, Alicen lost her hold. She let go and fell backwards and plopped directly onto her cake, crushing it with a precise imprint of her ass.

My parents served it anyway, with candles. I remember its sad lopsided-ness, the jokes about the butt-print in the frosting. But even a crushed birthday cake can still be wished on and eaten. 

When a cake is gobbled by the family dog, the wishes are gobbled up with it. 

Birthdays require a cake with candles. It's that simple. Although, if the birthday boy or girl requests it, a birthday pie can be substituted for the cake. Candles, however, are de rigueur if any wishing is going to happen. 

A birthday cake needn't be fancy. It can be homemade or bakery-made, from scratch or a boxed mix, decorated or plain, round, oblong, square or divided into individual cupcakes. What really matters is that there's enough cake for at least one candle to be stuck in and blown out and wished upon.

I don't remember much about what I got for childhood birthday gifts. But I do remember what I wished for. Most years I wished for a pony and a swimming pool. 

Except for when I was four. 

That year I just wished someone had tied up the goddamn dog.

Getting A Package In The Mail

"Brown paper packages tied up with strings

These are a few of my favorite things."

-- Rodgers and Hammerstein, 

"My Favorite Things," The Sound of Music

Paper heart box 7-22-14

I get packages on my doorstep all the time, but they're typically full of stuff I've purchased online and sent to myself.

I know they're coming.

It's no big surprise when they arrive.

Hell, I can even track them minute by minute until they get here.

But a surprise package, sent from a friend, loaded with special items selected just for me? That's a whole other kettle of fish.

My birthday was over a week ago, but I got a birthday package in the mail yesterday anyway.

It was from my friend Kelly. She sent me a box of really great stuff all the way from Rhode Island.

Kelly is always sending me little surprises through the mail, even when it's not my birthday -- everything from Lego mini figures, to skull bandanas, to books, to t-shirts to pastries from her hipster Providence bakery. (She is still trying to crack the code on how to ship her delicate, fragile meringues without the USPS reducing them to rubble.)

I can tell at a glance if a box on my doorstep is from Kelly, because she usually seals them with cupcake duct tape.

Even though I'm a big kid now, the thrill of getting a surprise package in the mail never gets old. It still makes me as super happy and super excited as it did when I was small. And there's something about knowing someone thought of me when we weren't even together that feels, well, really good.

And so ...

Ding! Ding! Ding!

In honor of my awesome thoughtful friend, I'm introducing the One Good Thing "What the Helly-Kelly Surprise Package Challenge."

Think of someone you love, or like a real lot, and shoot them a li'l sumthin sumthin through the mail. You can make it, or buy it, or find it. And it doesn't have to be their birthday either. It doesn't have to be their anything. And don't tip them off that it's coming. Just send it and see how super happy and super excited you'll make them.

In fact, I'll bet it'll make you both feel pretty good.

(*Cupcake duct tape is totally optional, but is definitely a nice touch.)

Fresh Strawberries. In Ohio. In March.

"'Locavore' may have been the 2007 New Oxford American Dictionary Word of the Year, 

but there's already been a word for those whose diets are restricted 

to seasonal items grown in their immediate area: 

That word is 'peasant.'"

-- Brett Martin

Strawberries 3-10-14

I know.

I know that out of responsibility for the environment I should shun out-of-state strawberries that are trucked into Ohio supermarkets while our own berry plants are still dormant under a blanket of snow.

I know about the damaging effects of the fossil fuels used to haul them here to Ohio from Florida, or wherever they grew.

I know I should hold out until June when the native, local strawberries are ripe, and then go pick them myself and enjoy them in season, the way nature intended.

But I also know that our friend Vera turns 86 today, which means Vera needs a birthday cake.

And I know that Vera likes strawberries.

And I know that the only way to bake Vera a strawberry birthday cake was to go ahead and buy the trucked-in berries.

Which I did.

Yesterday I baked the strawberry cake and we took it over to Vera, along with a birthday card, a party hat and some vanilla ice cream (made at a local dairy from locally-produced milk! See, the universe balances itself.)

Vera 3-10-14

And when she said she'd read a recipe for a white cake with strawberries in a magazine, and had thought to herself "Wouldn't that be nice for my birthday?" but decided not to make it because she's had the flu and was just too tired to bake ... well, I was never so glad for store-bought berries. Because nobody should have to bake their own birthday cake. Especially if they've been sick. And extra-especially if they're as dear and sweet as Vera.

If you are a hardcore locavore, forgive me. I acknowledge and respect your commendable efforts at eco-consciousness and sustainability and halting global warming. I also ask you to look at Vera's happy grin and tell me a little plastic box of Florida berries wasn't totally worth breaking the rules for.

It's a magical kind of alchemy that can turn a few red berries into a smile like Vera's.

I'll worry about my big fat carbon footprint a different day.

For today, I just feel lucky to be part of the magic.