A Birthday Stream of Consciousness About Cake and Freezing to Death

200 some words over 500

At 10:24 this morning, I turned 48. I still get confused if that means I’ve lived 47 full years or 48. I think it means I began my 48^th year a few hours ago. So far so good! For not being on FB, I’m always astounded at how many birthday greetings I receive without an algorithmic prompt. Before 8:30 this morning, eleven loved ones texted me birthday wishes and a dear friend in France sent me an e-card. An e-card! I forgot they even existed, so it felt as analog as a paper card

Forty-eight years ago, I crowned in the back of a Cadillac. Mom loves to tell the story of my short birth where I was born in 9 minutes. She didn’t even need any stitches. I slipped into this world quiet and non-violent. The story of my becoming, as told by my mom, is ever full of joy, awe, and a little bit of precariousness, “You were so tiny, and it was just you and me, and I had no idea what I was doing.” Three weeks late and weighing only 5 pounds, I’ve spent the rest of my life on time and with weight issues – of the mind if not always of the body.

Birthdays mean a lot to people who love cake, and I’ve been a cake-kid forever. Most cakes are substandard. How many weddings cast their sugar lure in my hungry lake only to offer me tiers of greasy, hyper-colored frosting and dune-dry cakes that can’t be fixed by even champagne?

Too.

Fucking.

Many.

No wonder Megan and I opened a bakery. Megan, the only other person I’d trust to bake my birthday cake other than me. Tho my mom, admittedly not a baker, made a perfect birthday cake when I was 25. It was as close as anyone has ever come, even me, to replicating the birthday cake baked for me every year by my paternal great-grandmother. Pink angel food cake with a loft that I will call, much to my chagrin, heavenly. It was made even taller by the inch-thick layer of pink seven-minute frosting. Hazel loved me dearly and would hold me with that not-too-tight pressure of love as unafraid as it was unconditional. She was married to a tyrant of a man and died in a fog of dementia in a snowstorm after she’d wandered off from her nursing home. Maybe that was her way of finally escaping the grasp of the society that took a brilliant Flapper girl and imprisoned her in a box of not-allowed-anywhere.

Anyway, cake.

I baked two this year. The first is a 9-inch, two-layer almond white cake with a strawberry whipped cream filling and a white chocolate strawberry ganache. This is the cake I will share.

With Jim, when he gets home from work.

With my dearest neighbor, Carla, a big poem of a soul in a tiny body nearly three decades my senior.

With my stepdad, who stopped by to deliver a card that we have been giving back and forth to each other for 14 years.

And to anyone else who may visit today.

The second cake is a 6-inch, three-layer chocolate cake with a vanilla whipped cream filling and a chocolate glaze icing. This cake is all for me and I will not share it. Whatever is not eaten, will be frozen for the future. A sudden link to my great-grandmother freezing to death. When that happened, it seemed torturous, a death of forgotten in a realm of forgetfulness. But maybe she just chose an intuitive wintry version of walking into the sea. I will think of her when I eat my once-frozen cake.

Even tho I’ve been aging since I was born, 48 feels substantial. It’s just an arm’s length away from 50. Each year, like each grey hair, is one that didn’t exist before. Yet. . .I feel sexy. Maybe it’s the 16 days sans sugar, or maybe it’s just that I’ve been calmer lately, and being calm doesn’t age us as fast as being anxious. Fear is as effective as water on rock, cutting lines in our faces and concealing our eyes by a foam of churning wave. So I am trying to breathe and be. Even took a photo to document.

How old are you?

When is your birthday?

What is your favorite birthday cake?

Maybe I will bake for you one day.