The Birthday Cake: A Love Story

Today is my birthday (48) and half my family is doing the college freshman orientation thing in a different state, so it's just me and my younger daughter. She's excited about making the day special, but of course she's still sleeping ... I'm the only morning person in my house.

I always say I don't like birthdays, but I actually do. If my family ever really took me at my word -- "I don't want anything" -- I'd be hurt. So the absent family members gave me gifts before they left. My eldest went to a Renaissance Fair and brought back a hand-blown glass goblet; I admire these things every year, but I never buy any. So that was very sweet of her and I love it. And Mr. Ether gave me a little tiny German-made metronome. I've been learning to play the guitar for a few years now, but I am very shy about it. Mr. Ether (a professional musician himself) has been unfailing in his support of my efforts -- a gift in and of itself.

I'm looking forward to the cheesecake my younger daughter is making. I started to write that no one has made me a cake in my adulthood, but that's not true. When I turned 25 I decided to throw a party at a park shelter. I had my heart set on a European-style torte with fruit and marzipan from a German bakery, and I asked my mom if she would pick it up the day before the party. Alas, she did not, and the bakery was closed on party day.

My mom decided to make me a cake; she made a mean pineapple upside-down cake. But two of my mom's idiosyncrasies were never doing things in a timely way and doing everything on a large scale. So she showed up at the park about an hour late with an enormous pineapple upside-down cake in the back of the station wagon. It had just come out of the oven and -- I'm not exaggerating -- it was about the circumference of a garbage can lid.

She was embarrassed about not getting the cake I wanted and being late, so she was in a bad temper. She inverted the cake onto a big board the way you're supposed to with a pineapple upside-down cake ... and raw cake batter ran out all over the back of her car. The cake was so huge and she hadn't baked it long enough. It was entirely raw in the middle!

I was mortified and furious -- selfish little so and so that I was. I still feel guilty about my attitude. It took me many years to see that she made me that cake because she loved me. And I was so ungracious.

My mom died 6 years ago. When we were cleaning her house, one of the things I kept was her favorite cookbook, The Settlement Cookbook. The book opens up every time right to the pineapple upside-down cake recipe, which is stained and tattered. And I say a little "thank you, Mommy, I love you" every time I see it.