I usually bake a cake. One year I trowelled on the frosting while the cake was still warm, writing “Happy Birthday Maria” in red cake-writing goo. And as we sang Happy Birthday, the green frosting oozed down the sides of the cake followed by the red cake-writing goo, forming a petroleum-spill red and green paisley puddle, pooled around the base of the scratch-made yellow cake.
After Maria blew out the candles, I was the only one that would try it, insisting that it tasted fine, pushing giant forkfuls into my mouth defiantly. It sat untouched on the middle shelf of the fridge for a week, and finally disappeared.
I think she’s sick of cakes.
She staged the whole thing. An antique-white breakfast-in-bed tray appeared on the kitchen counter one morning. It sat there anonymously for a few days, at anchor in the sea of school papers and supper dishes.
One night at supper, Maria casually introduced the topic of breakfast-in-bed, describing how some families served breakfast-in-bed as something very special for a mom’s birthday.
Our kids are fascinated by ordinary activities in unusual places, so the idea of eating a full meal in one’s pajamas, in bed, under the covers, set them fully atwitter. Our youngest boy enthusiastically offered supper in the bathtub as a sort of logical next step, in case the bed thing didn’t work out.
Maria mentioned that sometimes children cooked breakfast-in-bed for their moms by themselves, often without breaking into fist fights or trying to push each other off their chairs. Moms especially love to have breakfast-in-bed on their birthdays, she confided. Conveniently, tomorrow was her birthday. Imagine.
The next morning, our oldest boy woke us with a dish towel draped over his arm, and with a low bow and flourish that I recognized from Blue Heron ballet, introduced himself as Maria’s birthday breakfast-in-bed chef, in a fruity, shifting, vaguely-European accent.
His youngest sister padded up the stairs in bare feet with a pink and purple diary in hand, asking Maria to circle items on the breakfast menu. The list of menu items, several pages long, started at the left of the page in huge mixed-case letters and ended in a conga-line of tiny letters down the right-hand margin, several hearts adorning the top and bottom of each page.
Maria scratched her choices on the paper with a stub of strawberry-scented pencil, careful to choose only those breakfast items that we actually had in the fridge; she’d purchased several of those items just the day before.
For a time Maria and I lay silent, stunned still by daylight, in the silvery winter-morning light and shadows, breakfast smells curling into our nostrils. Eggs, toast, hot cereal. Maria played Sudoku on her iPhone.
Presently our chef returned with a vacuum-packed pound of bacon in his hand, asking how to open it. Maria showed him the proper way to slice open the package and extract slices of bacon, calling out cooking hints as he ran back down the stairs, oblivious.
I imagined our four kids, a couple of them standing on chairs, studying a pan of sizzling bacon grease. The image snapped into sharp focus, and I quickly threw on my robe and followed our oldest boy downstairs.
In the kitchen, the kids were rosy-cheeked, cooperative, humming happily. Two fried eggs, rather cold toast and a semi-solid bowl of Malt-o-Meal were already plated and on deck. Our oldest boy was hunched over, frying precisely two strips of bacon in a gigantic smoking skillet, while his younger sister was expertly pulling a shot of espresso and her younger brother steamed milk beside her; our youngest daughter waited with a floral-patterned cup in hand for steamed milk and coffee.
With a green construction-paper birthday leprechaun cut-out on the tray, and bowls and plates and cups jittering and clattering precariously, the twins slowly and carefully toted their cargo up the stairs, one at each end.
At the top of the stairs, their faces reflexively pulled into shy smiles as they laid the tray carefully on Maria’s lap. She sighed approvingly, and closed her eyes for a moment. After a minute or so of polite restraint, the kids ate most of the breakfast themselves.
Maria turned to me, murmuring that this might make a fine subject for my next column. She looked up at me, lingering on a spot near my mouth for a few moments.
She’d staged the whole thing. Happy birthday, honey.
— Kevin Pottinger and is wife Maria are the parents of four children.
