When you pull out the eggs and the butter and the flour—plain, not self-rising; you will never make that mistake again—and the absurd quantities of sugar, remember to set the recipe card in a safe place. There are things you cannot keep safe, that you have already failed forever to keep safe, but you must remember to protect this one card written in your grandmother’s hand and saved in your mother’s recipe box. There’s a child in your house who won’t eat icing, and today is his birthday, and he will not always be a child, and you will not always keep him safe.
