Blow Out the Candles

Yesterday I posted this pictures on my Facebook page. It was snapped 27 years, almost to the second, from the moment the handsome young man on the right blinked for the first time and yelled his disapproval of the bright lights and activity surrounding him. Boy#4 had joined our family.

He'd already had an eventful morning: We arrived at the hospital early to find that sometime between my final prenatal check on Friday and the Monday scheduled induction, this child had decided to flip and was now sitting Buddha-ish with his head right between my ribs. The fact that I did not know that almost 10 pounds of human being had done a complete flip INSIDE MY BODY is a tribute to  his five-year-old, almost-four-year-old, and two-year-old brothers, who had been competing for my attention during that weekend. Also, we had an unexpected house guest, so there was that.

Anyway, my obstetrician happened to be the only person in Big City Hospital who had been trained to perform an external cephalic version which is a fancy way of saying "turning the baby." And because this  pushy-pully maneuver was something the doctors at BCH normally did not attempt, enough extraneous hospital personnel (interns, nurses, aides, other doctors, janitors, etc.) gathered to observe   that Husband remarked we could get a pretty good start on Four's college fund if we charged admission--but this was not at all the blog I planned to write today.

I was going  to write about birthday cakes, and how they've morphed in our family since the frog-themed Dairy Queen cake that marked Boy#1's first birthday. I've made dozens of cakes over the year, maybe as many as a hundred when you count Husband's birthdays.

I would begin planning the cakes weeks in advance--what were the Boy's interests? How could I symbolize those in buttercream? The results weren't Pinterest-worthy but that wasn't a problem because for most of those years Pinterest didn't exist. And they usually turned out whimsical and fun, like this Winnie the Pooh that I freehanded on top of a cake into which love had been added with every ingredient:

Yesterday's celebratory dessert was different. Husband and I took Four out to church and lunch in the Big City to the South where he  lives, then we went back to his apartment where I pulled out a book of matches  and some candles....

...and stuck them into a pie.

Which was purchased. 

By the birthday boy.

As Husband and I sang "Happy Birthday" Four was urging us to double-time the song because "the smoke alarm in here is really sensitive and it's horrible to turn off. Open the windows, quick!"

It occurred to me that all those years ago I would not have believed I would arrive at this point, where the candles and "cake" would be less satisfying than seeing Husband and Four working on his tax return together.

Like birth experiences, birthday traditions don't always turn out the way you think they will. It turns out maybe/probably I was the only one obsessing over those cakes--when I polled the Boys last night, no one could remember which had been the recipient of the Winnie the Pooh cake. (I had to look for photographic evidence. It was Boy#2.)

All those years ago I thought the cake was the centerpiece of the birthday celebration, but it turns out all we needed was a birthday and some family to celebrate with.

Happy birthday, Boy#4. You still take the cake, even when the cake is a pie.