Twenty Candles

Well my eldest turned nineteen yesterday, so that meant twenty candles on her birthday cake. I don't know if mine is the only family to add "one to grow on" but we do. As my mother would say, my daughter is now in her twentieth year.

Despite the fact that she and her sister wouldn't get home until nine o'clock, the birthday girl insisted we wait to have dinner. It was her special day, after all. I suggested perhaps having the celebratory dinner on another evening, so we could eat when normal people do. But she'd have none of it: Birthdays are to be celebrated on the correct day, after all. And so we agreed: Dinner was to be served (in the form of takeout pizza) at nine, followed immediately by the cheesecake I'd baked the night before.

At eight forty-five, my husband and son went for pizza. I went to the kitchen, stomach growling, and began peeling carrots for the next day's school lunches.

A car pulled into the driveway. The dog barked. The garage door opened. An idea crept into my head: I set the peeler and the knife on the counter. I got down onto my knees. Then I sprawled face-down on the floor and closed my eyes. And as I lay there, waiting for the girls to come in, the thought occurred to me that perhaps this wasn't a good idea. Scaring one's offspring half to death never is.



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