On Your Birthday, June
Today is June’s third birthday.
Happy Birthday, Junie.
On a whim, I decided to buy your birthday cake. I happened to be out doing errands, and although it didn’t make the cut on my list of things to do, it suddenly became the only thing I needed to do. Had I thought about buying a cake, I might have planned it. After perusing the options in the glass refrigerator, taking into account what your sister would like and what your daddy likes, I settled on a two-tiered red velvet cake with vanilla buttercream frosting.
I asked the woman behind the counter to please write June on the cake. She asked if I wanted to write Happy Birthday, June. I hadn’t mentioned it was June’s birthday, and writing Happy Birthday, June was not something I had considered.
I hadn’t realized I was purchasing a cake until the moment I stepped foot in the bakery. I typed the bakery name in my GPS and allowed the voice to blindly take me to a bakery I’d never visited before. Suddenly, I was pulling into the bakery parking lot. Before I could digest what was happening, I found myself standing across from a woman behind a glass counter filled with pastries.
A line of people started to form behind me and was growing longer. I could feel the pressure intensifying as I tried to decide how to leave the bakery with something we all wanted. The truth was, what I wanted I could not find in a bakery, in a glass case, or in a cake. What we all want we will never have. I’m forced to settle. I try to decide. How do you know what you want if you’ve never considered it? I could not decide. “I don’t know,” I said to the woman. Her eyes flitted to the couple standing behind me, and then to the couple behind them. “I think just June is okay.” “Okay,” she said as she bent down to lift the cake in her arms and bring it out back. “Actually. Could you also write Happy Birthday for me?” There it was, the eye-roll, accompanied by a sigh. I was asking for this. Or was I? Tears welled in my eyes. Don’t you know, June won’t be eating her birthday cake? Of course I didn’t ask for this. None of this makes any sense to me.
“Will that be all?” I knew it wasn’t all. I had to tell her. Before I could decide if my decision making skills were flawed, I heard myself saying, “I couldn’t decide whether or not to write Happy Birthday because this cake is for my daughter who died.” Tears, lots of them, run down my face.
“Oh,” her eyes soften. “Can I bring you anything else?”
“A lemon bar,” because what the hell.
She disappears to the back of the kitchen with the cake. I walk to the far end of the pastry case, where I’m out of the way. I notice water and cups free for the taking. I fill a cup with a few sips to quench my sandpaper tongue. It’s as if after I’ve spent hours crying, and the well of tears is dried up, the reserve is the moisture from my mouth. I imagine the tears I’m crying being freshly squeezed from my tongue. None of this makes any sense to me.
“What do you think?” she says as she returns, displaying the cake in her hands.
“Happy Birthday, June!” it reads.
The exclamation point. It’s not right. It’s out of place. There’s nothing emphatic about June’s third birthday. Why is there an exclamation point? I want to ask her. At that moment, I knew June was the more appropriate option.
“Beautiful,” I say because I have already burdened this woman enough.
“I can ring you up here.”
The line of people now wraps around the bakery. After I pay, I step to the area where the tables are and people are sitting eating pastries, drinking hot coffees. I watch the woman carefully place the cake in a box, taping each side closed. I wonder where this woman’s help is as people chaotically meander about the pastry case.
“Here you go,” she says.
“Did I purchase a lemon bar?” If not, I was happy to leave.
“Oh! Yes, you did. Sorry, let me get it for you.”
“It’s okay, I just threw a lot at you.” I say.
She stops. She looks at me. I see her contemplating a response. “No, you didn’t.”
She hands me the bar. I lift the cake off the counter. I walk outside into the warm sunshine.
I don’t know if what I did was right. At times, I don’t know what the right thing to do is. I have your birthday cake and that’s all that matters. Now we can, not-so-emphatically, but rather, gently, lovingly, and in the most unaccepting way, celebrate your day.
As I drive home, I decide I’m going to scrape the exclamation point off the end and eat it. I’m not sure exactly why I have to do this, but then again, you’re not here to celebrate your third birthday, and none of this makes any sense.
