A Sweet Celebration

By Lucia Garzon

When do you start to realize your birthday is coming? For some people, it’s when summer vacation starts or leaves begin to fall from trees. For others, it’s when people start treating them like they’re a little older already. But for me, it’s when my father asks what kind of cake I want for my birthday.

My father loves to cook. He’s really the only one who cooks in the family, as my mother has said on numerous occasions that she doesn’t like to cook. She can make eggs and pasta, but that’s about it. My mother has other talents, though. She’s smart, ambitious, and organized, just like me. Not to say that my father is stupid, because he’s not. But he’s more of the creative type, which is something I’ve always admired. Something I’ve always identified with.

My father learned to cook by watching his own mother cook. It’s easy to imagine him as a little boy, perched on a chair with his arms resting on the table, observing as his older sisters played together somewhere in the distance, excluding the only boy like always. He’s taking in the sight of his mother making traditional Colombian food with a skill he envied, the warm smell overflowing his senses. And thank goodness he watched her so intensely, because now he can fill our plates with those same delicious dishes, and he is eager to make anything my mother, sister, or I would like.

My favorite food is chocolate cake, but not the chocolate cake you can easily buy at the store. Those cakes never tasted special to me. I like the way my father makes it, which is velvety and moist with creamy frosting. The inside had decadent melted caramel delicately sticking the two layers together. He sprinkled sea salt on top of the cake to balance out all the flavors. The chocolate, sea salt and caramel came together in the cake to make a perfectly sticky and sweet dessert. 

When I was little, I used to ask him to make it every year for my birthday. Eventually, he didn't even need a recipe. He liked to make all our birthday cakes, regardless of the recipe we requested. But when his birthday came around, my mother ran to the nearest supermarket and bought him his favorite kind of cake, cheesecake. He didn’t seem to mind in the slightest.

 I loved helping him make my chocolate cake, to precisely and carefully measure out each ingredient in separate glass bowls, to feel the hand mixer whirring beneath my hands as it combined everything, to watch the cake expand in the oven like a sunrise on a slow morning, and to spread the frosting around the cake and cover it like it was a light brown blanket. The sweet aroma of cake wafted through the house, making the scent linger for the whole day. 

Then we would light the candles with our red lighter I had always been afraid to touch for fear of burning myself and sing Happy Birthday to me, in both English and Spanish. My parents took tons of pictures for my relatives to see, with my face illuminated with the orange glow of the candles. I blew out the candles and made a wish I couldn’t tell anyone.

After that, we cut the cake and ate it. First, my father cut my piece, crumbs falling everywhere. My younger sister’s sticky fingers would sweep up the crumbs, impatient to try the cake. When I was younger, I would do that too, until I deemed myself much too mature to partake in it.

My teeth sank into the indulgent chocolate cake, the caramel sticking to my tongue, the sea salt producing a sharp flavor, and the frosting melting in my mouth. Those four components made such an enchanting harmony with each other. “You did such a good job with this cake! I love it!” I would say to my father.

“No,” he would reply. “You did a good job. You basically made it! I just helped.” A smile would creep onto my face at the praise. My whole family murmured their approval when they received their thick cake slices, their forks scraping against white plates and smearing the sweet frosting over them. 

Then the usual birthday events would pass by. The opening of presents and calls from my extended family made me happy, of course. But the satisfaction I felt in creating something so delicious was the sweetest part of the celebration.