Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Free dessert isn't what I meant

Nobody ever asks me what I want for my birthday--not my mother, not my husband, not even Joanna who sends gifts every year. I know it's ungracious to suggest one is displeased with any gift, but there's something to be said for getting what you want. I mean, I don't ask for anything, in fact I ask that nobody give me anything at all, but I still end up with a few gifts, anyway.

Here is what I want for my birthday:
A large, multi-layer, very beautiful, colorful, delicious birthday cake with generous amounts of icing, preferably butter cream (no fondant) and with lots of rosettes. I believe that cake is really just a delivery vehicle for icing.

Cake, hmmm...chocolate chip or chocolate or vanilla white or vanilla strawberry or, well, does it matter?

There doesn't even have to be a candle on it.

My 30th birthday coincided with moving day. I was being relocated by Time Warner, and leaving my hometown in Pennsylvania for a job outside of New York City. I spent the day instructing the movers and cleaning the house, and then I put the cats in the car and stopped by my parents' house to say goodbye, as they had asked.

My mother forgot I was coming. In fact, she had forgotten it was my birthday (again). She got up from the recliner and took the remaining half of a leftover Entemann's pound cake off the counter. She rummaged in the junk drawer and eventually pulled out a used, lint-covered blue and white striped birthday candle. She stuck the candle in the cake, lit it, and told me to make a wish. She didn't actually offer me any cake--she and my father had already finished dinner and dessert. This was the closest I had come to having a birthday cake in several years, and it was pretty much my last encounter with one.

So, if you see Frank between now and this day next year, tell him to stop buying accessories for my car and just go out to a non-supermarket bakery and buy the most beautiful icing-laden birthday cake he can afford. Candles optional.

3 comments:

Ethereal Highway said...

Go to the bakery, May. Give yourself this present that you want. You should have it.

Laurel said...

I wish you'd posted this two weeks ago.

Sophie in the Moonlight said...

I believe that cake is just a vehicle for icing, too. I'm rather partial to homemade chocolate butter cream frosting. Screw the cake, just give me a spoon.

If I see Frank, I'll pass it on. (: