Cutting the cake

It's Friday night, usually my night out, but not tonight. Avril Lavigne is pouring out of the boom box in the girls' room, and it sounds as though a herd of elephants is thudding past my office, because it's the night of Fiona's sleepover 10th birthday party.

They have been loud, excited and happy ever since the first guests arrived a little before 6:00. Really really loud. I've taken both girls aside several times, trying to tell them to calm down. It's futile, though, and I know it.

They had spaghetti and garlic bread for dinner, spraying the table and the floor below with parmesan cheese. I was in the kitchen doing the dishes when I looked over and saw Fiona beginning to carve up the birthday cake on the kitchen counter. "What are you doing?" I asked her, exasperated.

She looked up at me, surprised. "I'm cutting up the cake."

"But we haven't had a chance to light the candles or sing Happy Birthday yet. Fiona!"

She looked down at the cake, back up at me, and all the happy animation drained out of her face. "But I . . . I . . ."

"I wanted to take a picture. Good grief, Fiona."

A little wrinkle appeared between her eyebrows. "We could still take a picture."

"But you've cut it up already," I snapped, knowing I sounded bitchy, but unable to keep myself from saying it. "It's too late. Why did you do that?" I compressed my lips and then spoke again, trying to gentle my voice. "Was it just that you were so excited that you forgot?"

She nodded. I turned back to the dishes. Fiona disappeared, but I knew she hadn't gone back out to the dining room where all her guests were in happy uproar.

I rolled my eyes, stripped off the dishwashing gloves, and followed her. Sure enough, there she stood halfway down the basement steps, her back toward me.

Yes, I had done it. Monster that I was, I had made my daughter cry at her own birthday party.

I sighed and came down the stairs and put my hands on her shoulders. "I didn't mean to make you cry, honey. I'm sorry. You're right. It's not important. I only wanted a picture of it. There's no reason that the cake can't have a cut in it first."

"We could sort of turn it away a little," she said, her lips trembling as her tears spilled over. "Then people wouldn't see the cut."

"It doesn't matter. We can take the picture of the cake just the way it is and not worry about it."

"I wish that you would put the pictures in photo albums," she said abruptly. "We have all these pictures you've taken, and you haven't put any pictures in any albums for five years."

She was perfectly right. I had carefully put the pictures in albums, cataloguing each one, for a number of years. But then I had Delia, and our lives got so busy . . . immediately I could feel it, my old familiar enemy, rearing its head at Fiona's accusation, going right for the jugular: Working mother's guilt. "I could be the sort of woman who works full time during the day to save up money for your college education," I told her with some asperity, "and comes home and stays up late every night putting photo albums together--" You could if you didn't waste time doing things like writing books. And LiveJournal my enemy whispered in the back of my brain. Shut up, I told it firmly. "But it's not going to happen. I'm not a perfect mother, Fiona. I'm just not." I sat down on the steps and took her into my arms. She nestled into my lap and wiped at the tears spilling down her cheeks. "I held you for the first time, ten years ago today. I held you, and I told you that I loved you very much, but I wanted you to know that I wasn't going to be a perfect mother. I knew I couldn't be. But I would do the very best that I could."

"No, you didn't."

I frowned. "Yes, I did. I've told you this story before, about how on the day you were born I held you--"

"Yes, but that wasn't ten years ago today. I wasn't born yet."

She was right, the little literalist. Ten years ago was the 28th. She was born on the 30th.

"Okay, ten years ago today you were kicking me in the ribs. But that's not the point. I'm not perfect, honey. And that cake doesn't have to be perfect, either. Let's go upstairs and dry your face and serve it up to your guests."

So we went back up to the kitchen and mopped her up with a Kleenex. Fiona went back out to the dining room. I lit the candles and brought the cake out and everyone sang happy birthday. Rob took pictures.

Nobody commented on the cut in the cake.

Peg

Diane Duane

Thanks to laurel who pointed out that Diane Duane's weblog Out of Ambit is available syndicated on livejournal as outofambit.