Birthday Cake

Flour. Eggs. Water. Vanilla extract. Sugar. Butter. Milk. Baking Powder.

Oh, and maybe a little love.

All cakes have these ingredients, and only these ingredients. If you throw in baking soda instead of powder, you’ll get a monstrosity. If you forget the extract, it will just be a huge loaf of semi-sweet bread.

Icing is even simpler.

Powdered Sugar. Butter. Vanilla. Milk.

Mix them up until they form stiff peaks. If you follow the instructions, nothing could ever go wrong.

A mother beats these ingredients together, wishing everything in life could be as defined as her recipes.

Re gifting

He overslept.

There are six unread voicemails on his phone.

Hello? Where are you? It’s our daughter’s birthday, remember?

It’s me again. It’s getting late. Where are you?

Its noon. If you are sleeping you have a serious problem. Get over here.

It’s me once again. She’s refusing to eat cake without you.

Hey. Where are you? Wake up.

The sun is blazing through the window. He checks his silver wristwatch.

2:38.

The party ended in an hour.

He just needed to wrap up his little girl’s present, and he could make it before everyone went home. Where was the present anyway? He went to Toys R Us and picked out the Barbie, right? Right after work, he was driving and then-

He never got the present.

Maybe there was something laying around the apartment.

It took him fifteen minutes, but he found a baseball at the bottom of his closet. A little work with a sharpie brought the ball to life, with a happy little smiley face with its mouth in a toothy grin. The ball was wrapped in the Sunday Comics, and he carried it gingerly into his truck.

He never realized it was the same baseball his daughter had given him for his birthday.

Flying party hats

Aunts and Uncles galore, pinching her cheek, telling her how pretty her party dress was.

“Can we eat the cake now?” her mother pleads.

The little girl sharply shakes her head. “Not until Daddy comes.”

The mother looks at her watch, and sighs. “Sweetie I don’t the he’s-”

“Happy birthday!”

The little girl’s eyes rise, to see her father standing in the doorway, arms open wide expecting a hug.

She flies toward him, and he scoops his daughter up twirling her around. The daughter giggles in delight, and calls to her mother.

“See? I told you he was coming!”

The mother’s eyes crawl sourly over the pair.

The daughter is lowered to the ground, her white Mary Janes clicking promptly.

“Go play with your cousins. Me and Mommy need to talk.” Her father instructs, and she does as she is told.

The little girl joins her cousins who sit in a semi-circle. They play games like “Ring-Around-The-Rosie” and “Duck, Duck, Goose.” It’s her turn to be the “tagger” in “Duck, Duck, Goose” when she hears a shout from the kitchen.

“You can’t just show up and give her a baseball wrapped in newspaper, get it together!” screams her mother.

The little girl’s eyes devour the conversation.

The mother’s hand finds a stack of pointed party hats, and launches them in her father’s direction. Since they were made of nothing but flimsy cardboard, they never once touched him, but flew everywhere.

They were like a flock of birds, flying everywhere. It was the funniest thing the little girl had ever seen, but she knew it was no time to laugh.

Soon, the stack of cones came to an end, and the mother’s hand equips with the last one, flinging it as hard as she could in no particular direction. It torpedoed through the air, and speared the cake she had slaved over only hours before.

The Birthday Song

There was only a half an hour left in the wreck of a birthday party, but the mother was determined to serve her cake.

The party hat had created a prompt crater in the cake, but it was nothing a little whipped cream couldn’t fix. The mother shook a can of Reddi-Whip, applying pressure to the nozzle.

Her mind flashed back to all the years her little girl went without seeing her father on her birthday. She pressed harder. The one time he finally decided to show up, he didn’t even bring her a proper birthday present what a-

Suddenly the cake is covered in a mountain of cream.

Her finger hops off the nozzle. The empty can found a home in the trash.  She takes fistfuls of whipped cream off of the cake watches them splat into the sink.

Six pink candles are shoved into the sloppy birthday treat. Her lungs inflate shakily, and with a swift flick of a handheld lighter, the candles dance with flames.

With the cake nestled in her arms, she forces a smile onto her face, entering the dining room where the family awaits.

“Happy birthday to you.”

Guests lift their voices.

“Happy birthday to you.”

The mother watches daughter’s face fill with delight. She did not seem to care about the fool her mother had become, or what a dead-beat father she was born to.

“Happy birthday dear, Emily”

The cake reaches its final destination front of her beaming little girl.
The mother’s eyes dart around. Her ex-husband looks sincerely at his daughter. All the Aunts and Uncles sing cheerfully. No one is acknowledging the demons of their family’s past.

For once, everything was at ease.

“Happy birthday to you.”

Her daughter extinguishes the candles, and swirls of smoke frame her face. The family cheers and claps.

Just like the extinguished flames, the moment is fading like wisps of smoke, and her ex-husband returns to his solemn face. The mother assumes her defensive state of mind. Aunts and Uncles resume their suspicions of her dysfunctional life.

After all, there was only one moment every year where her family could pass for normality.

During the Birthday Song.