My son has a favorite cake. It’s white with white buttercream, nothing special. And yet, because he is so picky, it took us years to settle on this for his perfect birthday cake.
Birthday cakes are special in our house. I have made 3D fairy house cakes, life-size tea cups and tea pot cakes, and one year I made a crane cake with extending crane and an actually swinging wrecking ball.
The kids are old enough that they no longer want fancy decorations on the cakes, but they do request particular, special creations. My oldest has a caramel cake with both caramel cream frosting and real caramel sauce. It is precisely as intense as it sounds.
This week my heart broke when my soon-to-be-eleven year old called to ask me to share his favorite cake recipe with his new basically-step-mom. He wants her to make it for him for his birthday.
Mom? he asked into the silence, because apparently I was not responding. Can you send me the recipe?
Why? I answered. You’re going to be here for your birthday.
He answered, We’re celebrating here the day before. I want Dad’s girlfriend to make it too.
I was not gracious. I was not quick and yes-of-coursing him the way his little eleven year old brain imagined I would. Of course mom will give me the cake recipe. It’s my birthday.
I sat there a little too long sifting through the options, imagining saying no, and then imagining my ex telling his family that I refused to share my recipe with his new almost-wife, imagining how they’d disapprove.
Shamed by my inability to say, Yes, of course, buddy, just let me find it, I pulled it together (I admit, barely) and instead I said, Sure, of course, and I sighed.
But I don't want to.
I feel like a child. I don’t want to share my fucking cake recipe. And I’m sorry, but I don’t.
Has she been the one who on my son's first birthday made several different eggless cake trial runs before his actual birthday so that he wouldn’t break out in hives? Has she been the one, over the years, cursing the oven temperature gauge or the way the store didn’t have buttermilk?
No. No she has not.
I play with the options: maybe he’ll forget, problem solved. Maybe I should encourage him again to ask for brownies, or a pie, because if I’m really thinking of her here, shouldn't she get to create her own traditions with my kids? Maybe I should just alter the recipe a little, one ingredient slightly off—change out the heavy cream for buttermilk, something harmless but important. Or maybe change the cook time so that the cake is slightly dry.
Okay, not the last one!
Now I’m back on brownies. I mean, why on earth would she even accept the recipe? His mother’s recipe. His mother, who is alive, and who is already making him this cake on his birthday!
What the fuck does she have against brownies anyhow?
My son is lovely, but he is also opinionated as fuck. Openly. (That could partially be my fault, but, not the point). He hasn’t quite gotten down the whole sometimes-it’s-better-to-not-mention-it thing. He will absolutely, 100% comment on the difference between the cakes. He will not even notice he’s doing it. He will not mean harm.
We’ll be sitting at the table, and singing happy birthday, having a lovely time, and then we’ll cut into his stupid white-on-white cake, and he will dig in and say something completely innocuous and I will fill with rage and want to cry.
I will say, Don’t you dare compare me to her!
Kidding. I would never say that shit. But I would want to. I am not a robot, after all. And I don’t care what high horse you think you sit on, you don’t want to be compared to your ex’s new-other either.
I do not want to hear that her cake is better (and damnit it’s my own fault for switching out the heavy cream!) I’m not even sure I want to hear that mine is better than hers.
Usually this new almost-new-mom business doesn't bother me, but I definitely don’t want to be in the same sentence as her where my cake is concerned.
Rationally I know that her baking my son a particular cake will not make my children love her more than they love me. It will probably not even make them love her the same as me. And aren’t I the one always insisting to them that love is not a finite resource, and that you can love many people at once? And don’t I want them to love her?
I do. I do want them to love her.
I just don’t want her to do it using my stuff. It feels invasive somehow.
I assure you, I do not want to feel this way. It is not pretty. It is not kind or generous or in any way rational.
What upsets me the most is how insane and immature it is to give a fuck about sharing your cake recipe and yet how upset I still feel despite knowing I’m being petty.
In the end, I will share the recipe. Of course I will. I will maybe half-jokingly blame the patriarchy for making me feel like I need to be nice and polite instead of standing my ground. That will soothe me enough to get over myself. The kid, after all, is eleven, and should definitely have the cake he wants. But I’d like a little credit, please, for being a really good person, at least, you know, eventually.
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