In Brief

Today, because I had not had one yesterday, Lily and I made me a birthday cake. We made exactly the kind of birthday cake I like, or rather one of the kinds of birthday cake I like, which is angelfood, with a beaten egg white frosting. Many people do not like this kind of cake, but I do, and so that is what we made. I gave Lily the box of food coloring, and she chose yellow for the frosting. Yellow is not what I would have chosen, and in fact I was surprised that she chose it, as it's not in her rotating cast of favorite colors, but yellow it was, so the cake is yellow. She sprinkled sugar crystals on it, and placed five candles on top, in a circle. "It looks like a flower, Mama," she said, and in fact, it sort of did. And then we went out into the cold, dreary day to do things like have blood drawn at the pediatrician's office and stand in the returns line at TJ Maxx.

When we came home, it was past dinnertime, basically bedtime, and I looked at my yellow, flower-like cake on the cake stand, and I looked at Lily, who had insisted on watching her blood flow into the vial to the doctor's shock, had patiently waited on line, and then on another line, and had busied herself typing love notes to me into my iphone, and I said, "What do you say we have that birthday cake for dinner?"

And so we lit the candles, and we sang happy birthday to me, one day late, and we each ate one fat wedge of cake, and then I ate another, and outside it was cold and dank, and inside, we had sugar sparkles on our sweaters and crumbs all over the table, and pale yellow icing on the lightest, fluffiest, most successful angelfood cake I have ever made. When we were done, Lily went in to the bathroom to brush her teeth, and I picked up the stubs of candles from the table and thought about how cake for breakfast wouldn't be such a terrible follow-up idea.