There was a time when birthdays were just that...birthdays. No fuss was made, and we, as children, accepted it without being hurt. We didn't know any different. It's just the way things were back then.

Dedicated to John because he asked me to write it.

 

 

 



It’s the late 1940s—too many decades have passed to recall the exact year. But of the day and month, December 1, I am positive, for it is my birthday. I’m seated at the checkered and oil-clothed table in the kitchen—a building altogether separate from the rest of our house on Bowen Creek. Heat radiates from the wood-burning cook stove, and the smell of winter’s smoke hangs in the air. I’m surrounded by the laughter of five older siblings and both my parents, my widened eyes riveted on the cake planted at the table’s center. All we ever got on our birthday to this point was a spanking—one lick for each year, one to grow on, and one to get married on. So, I’m thinking, Surely this isn’t happening to me. I’ve never had a birthday cake before. No one in my family ever has. In fact, it’s never been part of our dreams of things to have. So, this cake must have drifted down from heaven. It’s a lamb cake. That in itself confirms its origin. After assurance and reassurance from my mother that it is indeed my birthday cake, I continue staring at it in disbelief—guard it with my life for days afterwards and won’t allow a living soul to touch it. Heaven forbid they should ask for a piece or take a knife to it. So, time drifts by, as time always does, and with its passage, the cake hardens and becomes inedible to the human species. I’m never repentant, though, It’s my cake—mine to feast on with empty eyes instead of an unfilled stomach, even to worship as a gift from the God of heaven if I wish.

©2008 David Lee Thompson