Emily’s World: Birthday Cake
“Flour doesn’t taste too good.”
I look over at her. Her face is scrunched up and there’s flour on her lips. I try not to laugh, but come on. “Why did you eat flour?”
She shrugs. “I just wondered what it tasted like. Why do we need one half cups of something so yucky in the cake?” she asks, reading the ingredients.
“Well, flour makes the cake a cake. When it cooks, it gets tall and fluffy.”
She looks up at me. “And this makes it do that?”
I nod. “Yep.”
“Ok, we better not leave it out then,” she says, dumping it into the bowl. “But maybe we should add more sugar to make up for it.”
I shake my head. “I don’t think that’s necessary. We better just follow Grandma’s recipe.”
“If you’re sure,” she says skeptically.
I nod. “I’m sure.”
“Next. One-cup sugar.” She measures out one cup of sugar, spilling about a quarter of a cup on the floor. She looks down at the floor and her eyes get big. “Oops.”
“Good job there, slick.”
She looks back up at me. “It was the sugar’s fault.”
“It was?”
“Yes, sugar’s too slippery,” she says, re-measuring it and dumping it in the bowl, stirring it with a fork.
“So, did you and Uncle Sam get everything worked out?” She was a little upset with him earlier in the week.
“Yes. He’s not taking Daddy away for ten days anymore. He told me so. He said no more than five, unless I’m there too.” Emily's very excited about spending her spring break campaigning with Sam and Josh in
“You know that campaign time is very busy, right? I’m sure Uncle Sam is going to do his best, but…”
She interrupts me. “He promised.”
“Oh, ok then.” Emily and Sam take promises very seriously. If he promised, he promised. “What’s next?”
“Pour 8 oz chocolate sauce into the small bowl. Like the Wizard of Oz?”
“No silly. It means ounces. Use the liquid measuring cup.”
She takes the liquid measuring cup and starts pouring the chocolate sauce in it slowly. When it gets to 8 ounces, she pours it into the smaller bowl. “I didn’t spill any!” she exclaims.
“Good job.”
“What should we do with the extra chocolate sauce? Should we eat it?” she asks hopefully.
“No.”
She looks over at me with raised eyebrows. “Are you sure?”
“I’m pretty sure.”
She lets out a long breath. “What time does Daddy’s plane land?”
“Three more hours.”
She looks up at the clock. “Maybe we should call him to make sure,” she says casually.
“I don’t think that’s necessary.”
“You sure do say no a lot.”
“I do, don’t I?”
“Yes.”
“Too bad for you.”
“How about a three minute call? Just enough to get me by.” When Josh is out of town and Emily misses him but has already talked to him a few times that day, she negotiates three-minute calls. She says three minutes is just enough to get her by.
“Sorry Peanut, he’s already on the plane. He can’t pick up the phone when the plane’s in the air. You know that.”
“Daddy says that when Uncle Sam’s President and we fly around on Air Force One, the food will be yummy and the chairs will be comfy and we can talk on the phone while we’re in the air.”
“Well, that’s true, but that’s not for at least five more years.”
“I wish he’d hurry up and be President,” she mumbles under her breath.
“Daddy’ll be home in three hours, Emily.”
“But it’s been ten whole days!” she whines. “What if he doesn’t even recognize me? I get bigger and bigger every day.” Now she’s screeching like Josh does.
“If he doesn’t recognize you, I’ll remind him who you are.” She looks at me with wide eyes and an open mouth. “I’m just teasing. Of course he’ll recognize you. Now, how about the cake?”
“Oh, right,” she says, looking at the spoon in her hand. “4 tsp molten butter. What’s molten?”
I walk over to the piece of paper my mom wrote the recipe out on. “That’s melted. Grandma just has bad handwriting.”
“Like yours?” she asks, while counting over four lines on the butter and cutting it with a butter knife.
“Excuse me?”
She looks up at me. “Daddy says you have bad handwriting,” she says casually.
“It’s not bad, it’s…distinctive.” She giggles. “What?” I ask.
“He says you say that.”
“Well,” I say, trying to sound snotty. “I don’t really like him anyway.”
This time she just smiles. “Yes you do.”
“How do you know?”
“You kiss him on the lips, all the time.”
“All the time?”
“Yeah,” she says nodding, then goes back to her recipe. “Put chocolate and butter in bowl and melt in microwave.” She tosses the butter into the bowl of chocolate sauce, splattering a little on the table and on her face, then takes it to the microwave and sets the timer for ten minutes.
I smile and watch her work. “That’s only gonna take a few seconds. You better keep an eye on it.”
She looks at me and smiles her toothless grin. She’s now lost three teeth. She’s pulled all three herself, and although Josh and I were allowed to watch her pull the third one, we were given very strict instructions on where we could sit in the bathroom and how close our hands could come to her mouth. And after each tooth was pulled, she quietly and tentatively asked Josh if she was still as pretty as me. And each time, he pretended to study her face very carefully before telling her that she was exactly as pretty as me, but not any more so. Let’s face it, he’s a man and he wants to continue having sex. He’s playing it safe.
“All done!” she yells.
“The yelling Emily.”
“Sorry Mommy. This looks yummy. Are you sure I shouldn’t taste it, just to make sure it’s ok?”
I look at her and she’s got her toothless dimpled smile out and it’s so hard to refuse that. Finally, I dip a spoon in the chocolate butter concoction she has, blow on it and let her lick the spoon. “Yummy?” I ask.
She nods. “Yep. Good thing we tasted it to make sure.”
“Yes, it’s a good thing.”
“Next. Six eggs. I don’t like eggs.”
“You like them in cake.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Ok.” She goes to the refrigerator and gets out the eggs. “How do I do this? Do they have a pourer?”
“A pourer?”
“How do I get the stuff out of the egg?” I look at her and she’s holding an egg, turning it around in her hand, looking for… well, a pourer.
“Let me show you. You take an egg and crack it on the side of the bowl, like this. Then, you kind of pull it apart but hold on to it, and the insides slip right into the bowl. See?”
Her eyes light up. “Can I try one?”
“Absolutely.”
She takes an egg from the carton and holds it carefully in two hands, and her tongue snakes out of her mouth while she concentrates. She hits it really hard against the bowl and the entire egg breaks apart and into the batter. “Uh oh,” she says slowly.
“Hmm…” You had to see that coming. I start picking shell out of the batter and she goes for another egg. Not shockingly, the same thing happens.
“My eggs don’t work right,” she pouts. She's not much for taking the blame. The sugar's slippery, the eggs don't work...
“Are you giving up?”
“Never!” she says emphatically.
“Well, we need three more. Just keep trying.” What the hell, its just cake. A little eggshell never killed anyone. I think.
On her third egg, she taps very lightly. Too lightly. So she taps again. And again. And finally, it cracks. “I cracked it,” she whispers.
“Good, now put your thumbs by the crack and try pull it apart,” I whisper back. And no, I don’t know why we’re whispering. She puts her thumbs by the crack, then through the crack, and the egg slides out of the shell and into the bowl, this time with fewer crumbs. “See, that was closer,” I say cheerfully.
She has an ick look on her face. If you’ve never had a five year-old, you might not be familiar with the ick look, but hers is priceless. “My thumbs are all gooey now.”
I laugh at her and show her my hands, which have been de-shelling the batter. “Mine too.” And then, doing what any five year-old would do, she wipes her hands on the arm sleeve of my shirt. “Thank you,” I say sarcastically.
She smiles at me. “You’re welcome.”
I just shake my head. “Two more please.” The last two eggs go much like that one, and when she’s done, I beat the mixture while she carefully pours in the chocolate butter mixture.
“Is that all?” she asks when the batter's combined.
“We still need the vanilla.”
“Vanilla? Ice cream?”
“No, not vanilla ice cream. This vanilla,” I say, handing her the vanilla.
“But this is brown.”
“Yes.”
“Not white.”
“No.”
“And we want this?”
I nod. “One capful.”
“One capful?”
“Yes.”
“That’s all?”
“Yep.”
“What does brown vanilla do?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Then why do we need it?”
“I don’t know. I just know that we do.”
She looks at me like she doesn’t believe me, and then reads over the instructions. “Ok,” she sighs out when she sees it on the list. She takes the cap off the bottle, tips it to pour it into the cap, and proceeds to spill it all over the floor. And I mean ALL OVER the floor. “Oops.”
“You are your father, do you know that?” I ask casually. It’s really no big deal. After the sugar spill and chocolate sauce splatter, I’m going to have to mop anyway.
“Thank you,” she says smiling.
“What makes you so sure it was compliment?”
She shrugs. “He pushes higher than any other daddy at the park and he lets me order all by myself at Starbucks and he can pick me up, way up over his head.” She says that part holding her arms above her head to prove her point. “And when we order pizza, he always picks off the things I don’t like and he uses voices when he reads to me and he paints with me on my easel, and when I had the flu, he played Barbie’s with me.”
Now I can’t help laughing. “Your father played Barbie’s?”
She looks at me like she’s caught. “That last part might have been a secret.”
I laugh a little more. “I won’t tell.”
“Promise?”
I nod. “I promise.” But I can’t stop laughing.
“An Uncle Sam promise?”
“An Uncle Sam promise. Did he like Barbie’s?”
Now she laughs. “I don’t think so. He didn’t work the clothes too good. And I wouldn’t let him drive the car. I went driving while he made dinner and set the Barbie table.”
“Ahh… the man in the kitchen. Very good.”
“Aunt CJ taught me that.”
“Of course she did. She’s very smart.”
“What about chocolate chips?”
“Chocolate chips?” She changes subjects very quickly. I’m not sure where she got that…
“Wouldn’t it be yummy to add chocolate chips to the cake?”
“Em, the recipe doesn’t call for chocolate chips.”
“Well… no. But, wouldn’t they be good to add?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Please…..” Now I’m getting the toothless dimples again. Oh, what the hell? The kitchen’s a mess, the cake’s full of eggshells. Might as well add a few chocolate chips.
“Why not? One handful.”
“Three.”
“One.”
“Mommy! Negoshit with me.”
“I already did negotiate with you. I went from zero to one.”
She looks at me. “Oh. Right.” She puts her hand in a bag of chocolate chips, grabbing as many as her little hand will hold, and surprisingly, only spills eight or ten on the floor, then tosses them in the batter. Then she takes a spoon and stirs them in.
“Ok, I think we’re ready to bake.”
**********
“Mommy!” she yells from the living room, where she’s wrapping the grill tongs she got Josh for his birthday.
“Emily, the yelling,” I say, walking into the living room.
“Sorry, but I have tape in my hair, and I tried to pull it out and it hurts.”
“And how did you get tape in your hair?” I ask, carefully pulling it out.
“It wasn’t my fault, Mommy. The tape holder went crazy.” And she wonders why I didn’t let her cut the wrapping paper herself.
“And what is this?” I ask, pointing to the wrapping paper that has been neatly folded and wrapped around her neck.
“Oh… well,” she smiles her aren’t I cute smile. “I made a necklace. And a bracelet and a ring,” she says, holding up her arm so I can see. “Do you like them?”
“They’re beautiful,” I say, laughing. The wrapping paper's just plain blue, and the necklace has a small circle attached to it like some sort of pendant.
“Good,” she says, pulling another piece of folded up wrapping paper from behind her back. “Cause I made you one too.”
I look at it and smile. “I see that. Should I put it on?”
“I will!” she yells, jumping up. She wraps it around my neck and tapes it together, and suddenly I know how she got tape in her hair. Ouch. Then she sits back down and tapes one around my wrist. “Perfect!”
“I don’t get a ring?” I ask her.
“You already have a ring,” she tells me.
“Right. I forgot. Where are the tongs you bought Daddy?” Emily spent all month doing odd jobs for me at a dollar a pop so she could earn money to buy Josh a present with her own money that she picked out all alone. But with only $11, her choices were limited. I think she did very well, especially considering what some of her other ideas were.
“Here they are!” she exclaims, holding a wrapped package up for me to see. Yeah, there’s no doubt she wrapped those alone.
“You used a lot of tape there,” I say, examining it.
“Yep,” she says innocently.
“And three bows.”
“I like bows,” she says.
“Well, I think Daddy will love this,” I tell her. An $8 pair of grill tongs, and the cologne and
“Better than the Star Wars sheets?” she asks me seriously. See what I mean about some of her other ideas.
“Well, I’m sure he would’ve liked those too. But I think this is even better. Now,” I say, standing up. “Are you ready to frost the cake?”
“Can I do it alone?”
“Yes you may.”
“With no help?”
I nod. It’ll be ugly as sin, but he won’t care. “Sure.” When I say this, she hops up, throws her arms out to her sides and spins around. Kids.
**********
A half hour later, Emily's put about six layers of frosting on the cake. Her face, hands, shirt, arms and hair are all full of chocolate, and she’s singing an Elmo song.
When the door opens, she drops the scraper and runs into the living room. “Daddy!” I hear her yell, and I walk to the door that leads to the living room just in time to see her fling herself into his arms. Josh scoops her up and they spin around the room like she did earlier. That sounds about right.
“I missed you so much,” he says, kissing her on top of her head.
“I missed you too,” she says, holding on to him for dear life. “No more ten day trips, Daddy,” she whispers.
He pulls her closer. “That’s a deal,” he whispers back.
They hug for another good minute before she pulls back and looks at him. “Me and Mommy have a surprise for you for your birthday.”
He looks at her face and laughs. “Does it have anything to do with a chocolate cake?”
Her eyes get big and her mouth drops open. “How did you know?”
“I guess I’m just super smart,” he says, wiping frosting off her cheek and showing it to her before sticking his finger in his mouth. “Yummy.”
“Why don’t you go wash your face and hands and change shirts, Em,” I say from the doorway to the kitchen, where I’ve just been watching them.
She gives Josh one more long hug, then hops down as I walk over to my very gorgeous, now covered in frosting husband. “You guys are gonna kiss on the lips when I leave, aren’t you?” she asks as she walks towards the hall.
“Yes, ma’am, we are,” Josh says to her.
“I knew it,” she says giggling and heads off to the bathroom.