Efforts

The night before their 2nd birthday was spent slaving away on a boxed cake mix.* Make that two boxes. Baby was put to sleep, and normally I try to jump in bed before he wakes up again. Not that night. In fact, the first box of mix went to hell in a handbasket, they were angel food cupcakes (how appropriate) and although it mixed up nicely with my handheld mixer, still with that new mixer smell, I blame the uneven heat of the gas oven and the cupcake pans and the weather and the economy for burning half of the batch, rendering it rough to the roofs of mouths and chewy like beef jerky.

Not good enough for my girls, even with the crackly orange glaze brought to life from the pages of Joy.

So the next box was opened, a devil's food. How can one go wrong with chocolate? Whirr went the mixer. Scrape went the spatula. Bake went the oven. It looked ok, then I felt satisfied with it so I went to bed.

The next morning, we prepped to go to the cemetery. I made a chocolate frosting, with soy milk (hubby can't do lactose), and since this house doesn't have an offset spatula the cake was frosted with the best looking rice paddle we have.

Cake was packed, what do I know about plastic wrap and frosting? Obviously nothing, because patches of cake and frosting stuck. No worries, the patches were carefully hidden behind the cards with their names. It was a nice day, uncrowded for a Tuesday morning. I desperately wanted to share the cake with someone, to let them know we had twins and that it was their birthday.

In the supermarket I was pissed that there weren't two potted plants that were the same size, with the same number of flowers. I didn't want the girls to think I was playing favorites.

We took pictures, first of the marker with their picture and with the cake. Then with their baby brother. As I continued snapping away I realized I was taking pictures of the baby, focusing on him and not on the girls. Couldn't I give them a few moments for their birthday? How the heck do you mother babies on both ends of the heaven and the earth?

***

This time two years ago, they were alive. Alive! I can hardly believe it. Cerina was breathing on her own by the third day. They were both hooked up to ventilators, IVs in their heels, their tiny tiny heels. Little glimmers of hope with each passing minute, hour, that they might be able to come home, that we would have to rent an apartment in that city for a few months to be close to them, until that final ultrasound of their brains that told us they weren't coming home, that there was no nursery to organize, no registry to scramble together, no breast pump to rent, no sleepless nights due to feeding rather than crying and asking why.

*I've always admired how Monica celebrates her Sam & Jack's birthdays. Her efforts for her boys inspired me to do a little more this year, better than last year's store bought piece of cake piled high with too sweet frosting. And though I'll never be the awesome baker that she is (I was probably 15 before I found out that you could make a cake not from a box!), the least I could do for the girls was make them a birthday cake from a box. If they were alive, I would do that for them, and for years we'd laugh about how awful a baker their mommy was.