RWP/Day 10/Celebration

Split Screen

The screen on which your first
birthday plays in my mind is a split one,
like the one you play on Xbox
when you have a friend over.

Your father helped with the math,
cut the wood required to build the bookshelf
I would assemble with hammer and nails
according to the design sketched
in the same spiral notebook I used
for my Victorian Literature class.
A gift to you. From us.

On each screen is a grandmother, a cake.
You had two parties that year.

On the first screen,
You are wearing bib overalls,
a purposefully undersized top hat
attached by a ribbon under your chin,
red feather in the brim.
This cake I made out of brownie mix,
layered with chocolate ice cream and strawberries,
and topped with chocolate whipped cream.
The cake took longer than I thought it would to make,
but I finished just after midnight and
in the morning after coffee and email,
I checked on it in the freezer. There were only four
hours then until your guests arrived.
You were sleeping still.

At the party,
you kept tugging at the chin string
on the hat, managing twice to take it off,
only to have one of us, over-doting
put it back on again.
You are just a shadow figure when the lights
are dimmed. We all are.
Your baby arms,
lit by one bright candle,
waving,
your eyes wide.

It is a tradition in my family
that on the first birthday, the child
demolishes the cake.
The degree and method of demolishing
are among the first myths we make.
Did you cry and beg to be held
by your mother at the sight of the cake?
Did you fling chunks of icing and spongy cake onto the walls?
Onto the floor? Did you bury your face in it, laughing?


How must we have looked to you?
A mother, A father, A father's family,
standing round you
in your high chair
waiting to see what you'd do to the cake?

Because hateful words had been passed
and both judged the other's social and moral character,
this first birthday is a split screen
on which both story lines follow you.
You had a second party, for my kin.

On the second cake, I went for something different.
Carob cake with cream cheese frosting made to look
like a child's alphabet block,
bearing the first letter of your name
in yellow and blue and red.

Again in your high chair,
your shirt removed, the floor covered
in plastic, we watched, to see
what you would do.
I'd put so much frosting on the cake,
you nearly choked on it and I swooped in
with a sippie cup and carried you, cake-covered
to the bath.
You had cake in your nose.
I thought I might smell vanilla in the folds
of your neck for days. Your balled-up fists
held more cake. Your lips were blue,
dark brown cake rimmed your mouth.

You had just learned to walk, and you would
talk, talk, babble talk,
as you talked while I bathed you,
pouring cup after cup of water
over your shoulders, using my hand to shield your eyes
when the water cascaded down,
over your round baby head.