BIrthdays

Birthdays were something special at our house, so special in fact that we often “saved them” for a better day just as a child would his or her Halloween candy, or as dogs often do with their bones. Cakes, pictures of the cakes, and fighting were all important aspects of our birthdays, in fact the absence of just one of these vital features would have made our birthdays unworthy of the name birthday.
My mom made the best chocolate cake in the entire world, or at least on our block. This cake was made from scratch, and took hours to prepare. When mom was finished we knew it because she spent the next 12 hours in her recliner recuperating. Making it necessary to either cook the cake in advance or to postpone the birthday. Mom knew how much we loved her cake so she started making double, triple, and even quadruple batches. The cakes eventually became big enough to feed three hungry boys, an annoying little chipmunk named Alex ,who always got into the cake face first thus spoiling a good portion of it for the rest of us, and a cute baby girl for more than a week. My mom had to start using giant cookie sheets and making the cake rectangular instead of circular. We were always given the opportunity to choose a theme for our gigantic, delectable pastry. I loved bread, especially my mom’s homemade French bread, so one year I decided to decorate my cake by placing a miniature loaf of bread on the top. Years later my parents would explain to me that that was the first of my many odd behaviors that led them to the decision to test me for rabies.
If the cake was important to our birthdays, a picture of the cake was essential. Even more than being a tasty treat, the main purpose of the cake was to load it full of candles, haul it outside and take hundreds of pictures with the lucky sucker who had just lived another year. Upon looking through our family’s scrapbooks you would immediately notice an abnormally large amount of different kids’ pictures all holding a lit birthday cake and sporting a forced, cheesy grin.
Fighting was never a planned part of the celebrations, but inevitably came. Much of the fighting came from pent of feelings of frustrations for not having been able to invite any friends.
“This is a family affair,” is what my parents would always say. As I look back on those celebrations now that forced “togetherness time” actually did help to create a sense of unity between my siblings and I. That feeling of unity was usually absent, however on the chosen day of glee.
One of the worst fights came on Alex’s third birthday. He was so excited to shred and eat all of his wrapping paper, but it was not meant to be. The older three boys were just returning from a bike ride with my dad. Just as we were rounding the corner to our house Dallin biffed it.
“Nice shot,” I yelled back at him just as my dad was spinning around to check out what all of the commotion was.
“Foot-sack-it!” my dad yelled (this was a phrase that he only used right before he lost it). “What did you do to the bike?” he bellowed.
By the time we walked into the backyard Dallin was in tears and my dad was even more furious that Dallin had put a scratch on the frame of his bike. Dad had not yet, however notice the blood squirting out of Dallin’s open wounds.
“David don’t you see that your son is more important than a stupid bike,” mom was furious, and we all knew better than to get in the middle of our parents at a time like this.
“Foot-sack-it!”
The next thing that we heard was the slamming of the upstairs bedroom door. Then Alex started screaming in an attempt to out scream Dallin who was screaming “Owie! Owie! Owie!” at the top of his lungs. I wanted to join in the fun so I stuck my finger into the frosting and flung it in Andy’s face just in time for mom to see it. Andy and I were sent to our room while my mom cleaned up Dallin and Alex got to enjoy his birthday running through the yard free of supervision, and more importantly unencumbered by his clothes which he had shed shortly after we had all entered the house.