Cakes I Have Baked

There was a time in my life when I made some pretty darned good birthday cakes. Really, I did. Even though I had no culinary or artistic talent whatsoever, I tried to give the birthday boy exactly what he wanted for his special day, whether that something was chocolate icing with confetti at age three, or  Winnie the Pooh at age five....

I free-handed this icing. My 38-year-old self was much more awesome than I thought at the time.

 ...or a foot kicking a soccer ball at age eight.

Licorice string laces on the soccer boot.

Eventually the Boys  were not living within geographical reach of my oven, so I outsourced the cakes to brothers and friends and the food services at their dorms. But I went to fairly extreme lengths to make sure birthday was synonymous with cake. There was the year that we were camping during Boy#1's birthday, so I had a grocery store bakery decorate a cake for him. This doesn't sound complicated until you consider that this was pre-cellphones so all arrangements had to be made from the pay phone at the entrance to the campground.

Today is Boy#2's birthday. He is half a nation away, and hunkered down in his apartment under threat of ice inundation at the university where he is a graduate student. He's a smart, well-adjusted adult so I'm sure he's not suffering because his mother didn't bake him a birthday cake.

But his mother is suffering, just a little, and missing the beautiful-eyed boy who is now 26 years old.

Happy birthday, Two. I wish I could bake a cake for you.