The birthday cake

Checkerboard cake and presents

That's two books, an IKEA gift card and an iPhone 4!

Every year, the day before my son's birthday (most often) I release my inner David Liebovitz and make "the birthday cake". It is a baking extragavanza, a bakathon, an orgy (in the French sense, s'il vous plait) of sugar (several cups of two different types) and butter (4 1/2 sticks, or about 300 grs) and eggs (1 dozen plus 3 yolks) and chocolate (cocoa powder and a tablet and a half of dark chocolate; that's not so bad, now, is it?). I must set the better part of a day aside, because this cake takes hours. It would be faster if I had a second oven, but I don't. My husband would not understand this need.

He might were he to think about his surgical schedule and imagine having only one OR.

I also don't really have the room for it, but maybe I can find the motivation for the kitchen redo if I think about an Aga.

The day before my son's birthday is, you might know, my own -- Wait. I know. I ought not be spending my birthday baking, but listen and let me tell you: I choose to do this. It is my pleasure. Well, at least it is when I start out. The pleasure often starts to fade into the second or third hour of beating and folding and pouring and chopping and melting, when my skin feels permanently coated with a layer of fat, and I start to suspect that calories can be absorbed cutaneously, after all. --, and spending my birthday cooking and preparing for his became a tradition 19 years ago, when I was making my birthday dinner party for 13 and had my first contraction, 4 weeks early, at Balducci's cold cut counter.

I think I was buying mortadella.

From there, my brother accompanied me to Bruno Bakery on Laguardia Place, where I picked up my birthday cake. Seeing the wide smiles and doors held even wider open for me, my brother commented, "Pregnancy is like a platinum American Express card!"

My birthday cake read "Happy Birth-day!" The staff was delighted with themselves.

I was delighted with everyone.

My best friend from college came and took pictures of my big, pregnant belly in my bathroom, and I lost track of her after that evening. I sat Buddha-like on an easy chair in the corner of my studio, while my wonderful friends and family chatted, and I timed my contractions. If the baby weren't coming that night, it certainly wasn't waiting until my due date, even if I lie in bed and didn't move.

I am nearly certain that my cooking and other dinner preparations were not according to my Ob's instructions for rest. I did not take cabs, either.

Leaving later that evening -- Leaving! What! With the baby about to arrive, you're going 45 minutes back to Greenwich? Did I hear right? What if -- my mother assured me that there was little chance she wouldn't have time to make it back in, and drove home.

Oh.

I went to bed, and in the morning, I called in to report that I wouldn't be coming to work, since I was likely to be busy having a baby, but I was going to try to stay prone in bed and see if I couldn't manage to delay a little longer. I never heard people so excited to hear I wasn't coming in, and the day passed. My mother figured that late afternoon was good enough, and around 6 pm, we headed to NYU Medical Center. At 10:24 pm, my Ob asked, "Are you sure we got your due date right?"

Sam was born. Eyes squinched shut against the bright delivery room lights, he looked just like his father, who would not be participating, and a little aggravated, and I burst into tears. Not because he looked like his father, of course, but because he was born. 6 lbs 9 oz and a proportionate length that I have forgotten; he was beautiful, and he was healthy. He was perfect.

In the years since, I have spent my birthday worrying that 24 young children might possibly not have the best time imaginable and find my birthday party planning wanting the next day, baking cupcakes and cakes, and, finally, this cake for the last few years. I will tell the truth; my mother discovered it, and I adopted it, after all, everyone has to have their special birthday cake.

Mine, you ask, what was mine? White cake with lemon filling and White Mountain Frosting (this involves cream of tartar and beating the eggs whites to stiff peaks, too) sprinkled with coconut.

Sam's wife will responsible for finding one for their children, but she will have to let me continue making this one for him.



Oh, alright. If she insists, I can be generous and retire.
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We gonna' pahty like it's yo' birthday

Um, this is from the baby frogs with the help of a certain close relative of Sisyphe (yes, she has relatives, and she is a she), who has apparently heard from them, asking for help wishing me a happy birthday.
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Almost completely a baby frog

Look what I got to see! (Probably just because it's my birthday today.) A tiny baby frog with a bit of tail still!

H A P P Y B I R T H D A Y T O M E !

Life's little wonders and Facebook, plus a little laundry and sanding, are all I need to have such a lovely day.

Which is a good thing because it didn't start off so well.

I took Sam to the lab for blood tests -- Nothing serious, just teenage school-induced misery resulting in lots of tummy flus, although he's sure he has mono. I had it, and I can tell you that he doesn't. But, the doctor tested for it anyway -- and then to pick up his scooter, which he had left locked in a nicer neighborhood of the city near Moosesucks where he goes to school, when I picked him up from school yesterday. I took his feverish self directly to the doctor, merely stopping to pick up Sikkens stain for the windows at a wood retailer and then Leroy Merlin for some more Decapex.

"Mom, I really am feeling very sick, you know."

"Just one more stop, Sam. I need to be efficient, you know!"

"I'll tell you that when you're sick."

When we arrived, Sam let out a sigh.

"Part of the scooter is gone. Part of the front of the scooter." I looked closer. He was right, the entire part with the headlight that covers the wires was missing, its insides visible. "They tried to hotwire it." The U-lock was still there, locked through the rear wheel. It wasn't like they were getting anywhere very fast, but his friend's dirt bike was stolen out of his garage, forced entry, and they cut right through the U-lock.

This on top of the theft attempt one night a year ago, which resulted in having to replace the front fork; they threw it to the ground after they tried to force the locked direction and couldn't.

Houston, we have a crime problem, in case you hadn't heard.

Immigration and integration have been wonderful success stories. That's the other side of France, the one that makes me so angry.

But guess what? We can declare theft with the police on-line now!

Happy birthday to me!
Happy birthday to me!
Happy birthday, dear Sisyphe!
Happy birthday to me!

And many more.

And from Bev. You know who you are!



Wait! Why doesn't this video work? Someone stole it, too?
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Today, in the garden

the Saxifragia blooms

ps: saxifragia can grow on toits végétaux

Spring arrived, and the temperatures fell. 10° C this afternoon, partly overcast now, after some rather unexpected sunshine. Audouin pointed out as we drove home from the gym on Saturday morning that it is always this way; our spring comes in the month of March, and as soon as spring officially arrives, the weather craps out.

He's right.

"J'espère -- sans fond de raison, seulement l'espoir -- que le fait qu'on a eu un vrai hiver voudrait [note the use of the conditional tense here] dire qu'on va avoir un vrai été."

"Moi aussi." I resolved to appreciate the day, for as long as the blue skies beyond the brilliant yellow forsythia branches hold. Not long. That evening, having a dinner in the 15th arrondisement, we were all dressed to take a car, and I had a crisis of faith in our ability to find a parking space and arrive before desert.

"Il y a surement un parking dans le coin, non?" It's a lot to say that there is certainly a parking garage near her house (excuse me, that's how we talk here in Moosesucks, I meant building), more to say that it will be open when we'd need to recuperate the car after midnight. I have begged on interphones to be let in to get my car after closing at as early as 11 pm in parking garages in the 15th. The worst is that the interphones at McDonald's drive-thrus are nothing next to the clarity of communication with the (usually) immigrant (no offense intended; I am one) attendent on the other end of the line. Incomprehensible, and they get cranky about it! We decided to take the motorcycle, which turned out to be a very bad choice, apart from allowing 5 minutes of conversation upon our arrival. It's cool to arrive by motorcycle.

I knew that the chin strap on my helmet was too loose, but I thought it would be alright. As soon as we hit the highway, one hand was employed in pulling down on it under my chin to keep my helmet more or less in place. My eyes watered. It felt like I was receiving a particularly aggressive acupuncture treatment on my left cheek, and as though my head were being stretched up into the sky, pulled right off my shoulders. I could feel the tendons strained all the way down into my chest.

I bore up until I spied the first sign for the exit for the rest stop at Morainvilliers, and pointed in a very decided manner from the fast lane so that Audouin would understand that he was to get over and off there, in 2 km. 500 meters later, I repeated the gesture at the next sign. He signalled, shifted right and slipped into the exit lane. Relief. Pure and immediate relief.

"Qu'est-ce qu'il y a?" he asked. I never ask to stop.

"Mon casque. C'est pas assez serré, et il tire péniblement." That's when he explained that the problem with the windshield forced him to set it at its lowest position. It was creating turbulence I had never felt behind him. I couldn't even keep my lips closed. At least there was a reason. We struggled with my chin strap, which afforded some relief when we took off again, but I also had to ride with my head stuck out past his, turned like an Egyptian. The turbulence is less when you are not directly behind the pilot.

It was hell.

Home was worse. Far, far worse because to add insult to injury, the temperature had dropped from 8° to 2° C, or just above freezing, at speeds of up to 160 km per hour. My toes warmed up sometime around dawn. So much for not taking time to put on my thermal socks. Never, ever again will I be too hurried not to go retrieve them.

I felt fluish today. We leave for Morzine - Avoriaz Wednesday evening. I cannot be sick. I cannot be sick.

Yesterday was Audouin's birthday. His parents came to celebrate his advanced age (désolée, mon chéri!) and the most extraordinary thing happened.

I made him a fondant au chocolat to serve with a crème anglaise and chantilly (nicer than "whipped cream"), and then it occured to me that I might not have place on the cake for 54 candles, and one for good luck. Sam went and got the camera and joined me at the kitchen counter, where I listened to the conversation and crammed candles from the bowl of once- and twice-used birthday cake candles onto every centimeter square of cake surface available.

At least lighting them should be a cinch, I figured. There were so many they'd autocombust from the heat of those lit close by. At last, there wasn't the possibility of another and I started to light them. Sam took a match and helped finish. We didn't need a flash for the photo, although it occurred to me that we might need les pompiers.

I sang "Happy Birthday", lustily, in English, my in-laws joining in bravely, adding their French voices to my heartfelt song. The French love to sing "Happy Birthday" in English. It's the one bit of English they know.

Audouin tried to look brave, faced with such a lusty display of birthday fire, and puffing up his chest, he exhaled forcefully, achieving the exhaustion of a little more than half the candles and the dispersion of as much as half the powered sugar on the cake, disappearing behind a cloud of smoke and powdered sugar, while he took another breath to attack and Sam clicked away.

"Bon, je suppose que je peux compter les bougies en les enlevant maintenant," and I did, counting two by two. We got to about 38, and Audouin and his parents remarked that it looked like it might be pretty close to 54. I continued.

"40, 42, 44, 46... 48... 50 -- oh!" There was the silence of wonderment all around the table, and one after another face looked up at me in disbelief: 4 candles remained on the cake, next to the one I had gone to get for good luck. Everyone started to laugh at once.

"C'est pas possible."

"Mais ça alors là, je suis vraiment impressionné," dit Audouin, rising to take hold of my head and give me a kiss of recognition and gratitude from across the table, as I blushed in something resembling delight and pride for something undeserving of the latter.

How I did that, I will never know. That I did that, I will forever be grateful for a magic moment.
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