I’m standing at the kitchen sink, trying to rinse cake frosting from my freshly washed hair, when I realize I have a choice. 

It all started with Bob’s birthday two days ago. “I don’t want ANYTHING,” he told me a few days earlier. 

 His birthday feels like the first true spring day we’ve had this year.  I rise early to proof a batch of morning buns for him.  When they come out of the oven, we brew two batches of coffee, pack it all up in travel mugs and thermoses,  leave a tray of pastries for the kids, then head off into the woods for the entire morning.

This is a day of decadence for us.  The sun warms our faces as we hike out from under the tree canopy to sit beside one of our favorite birding ponds.  We watch the geese and the ducks, catch sight of a king fisher, hear a yellow-rumped warbler and drink in the first calls of the spring peepers with our first sips of coffee.  

For us, this is bliss.  Perfection.  We want nothing more for ourselves than this seat on the ground, the warmth in our hands, the buttery pull of the pastries between our fingers, the sounds of the geese and the peepers, the light splashing across the water.  Bob doesn’t want a birthday party.  He doesn’t want a cake.  We make sure the kids understand.  He just wants this.

We return to find that the kids have done the weekend cleaning for us before heading down to the farm to help with lambing.  With no house to clean, we run down to the post office and discover all of West Fulton seems to have bloomed at 6 foot intervals.  Neighbors call to each other, sit out on their stoops and wave, call out from car windows.  The fear of this pandemic has been mollified by a community’s adherence to the letter of the law, coupled with neighbors’ fierce determination to fire love, jokes and connection farther than any possible airborne virus particles.  

With the farm well in hand and the week’s labors complete and the house clean, Bob and I turn our attention to our yard with luxuriant wonder.  I pull weeds and divide perennials as he repairs the compost bin and shovels soil.  It’s been five years since the cafe opened, five years since we’ve had a Saturday free to do such Saturday things.  

On this day, in the face of so much world-wide trouble, we cloister ourselves to celebrate these vast riches:  good weather, a gift of time and health, good food, nice neighbors, places to roam, fun work, amazing kids.  

And then the weather turns.  

The first snowstorm is always welcome here at Sap Bush Hollow.  The last one is dreaded.   With good reason.  We get six inches of wet, sloppy snow on Sunday.  The farm is thrown into upheaval.  It happens every year…One moment we think spring has finally come, the next we’re shoveling snow and bringing lambs in to warm up by the wood stove.  Still, Saturday’s glow stays with me, and I marvel at our good fortune:  these three kids who are absorbed with the work, who take pride in their contributions; Kate, who is becoming a keen manager, overseeing their tasks and keeping them organized; Grammie and Pop Pop, who call from the farm house to report the latest antics that unfold with teenagers and livestock.  I keep tabs from my own house, put a Sunday ham roast in the oven, watch the snow and wait for everyone to come home to dinner.  But with the weather, Grammie and Pop Pop decide not to come.  And when she calls to tell me, Grammie starts to cry.

That’s when the bubble bursts.  It all seems so very OKAY, until it isn’t.  My mom misses me this snowy night.  The kids have gone home, the snow is mounting, and the sadness and confusion of the world come banging at the farm gate.  I settle in at my desk and cradle the receiver against my ear.  Pop Pop picks up on the extension.  There, the three of us stay for the next hour, connected by the phone wires, telling stories of the day, ignoring the banging at the gate until it gives up for the night and goes away.

But it pounds again on Monday morning.  By then, Bob and I are back to our own labors: taking the food delivery, disinfecting jugs of milk, updating inventory, moving, packing, cleaning, calling, filing, number crunching, doing web work….All the things that are now part of our new normal work week.  Grammie and Pop Pop’s new normal isn’t like that.  Our family is their world now.  There’s no Sap Bush Saturdays at the cafe to catch up with friends and neighbors. Pop Pop doesn’t have coffee with his friends in town.  Grammie doesn’t get to go to pilates or yoga with her neighbors.  She doesn’t get to haul and pack and lift and write and crunch numbers like Bob and me.  She doesn’t get to climb over fences and squat down with the newborn lambs, or throw her weight against the sows to fend them off from a bucket of feed, or hoist the chicken pens and drag them to new grass.  She gets to follow the news.  She gets to worry about us. She gets to despair about the weather.

Ula finds her crying when she comes in from the barn.  She texts and asks if we can re-do Sunday dinner on Monday.  I agree.

Then she and Grammie start to plan the birthday party.  Even though Bob didn’t want a birthday party.  Even though Bob didn’t want a cake.  

Bob and I, meanwhile, are back in the throes of our own week:  The house has gone to chaos again, there’s fat to render on the counter, broth to strain on the stove.  We’re tired from our day, and I long for a hot shower.  I’ll start dinner only after I’ve had one.

I come downstairs, my hair still wrapped in a towel, ready to make sausage and peppers.  Grammie and Pop Pop are in the next room, settling beside the fire with cocktails.  I want to toss dinner in the oven and go join them.  But there’s a banging noise as I come into the kitchen.  Ula’s at the counter, thwacking a pan against a butcher block, trying to get a resistant cake to release.  Crumbs and baking racks and frosting cover my work space.  The adrenaline from her panic over the trapped cake spreads like yet another virus.  A second batch of blue frosting soup is on the back counter.  The snow from outside has come inside in the form of powdered sugar, coating my entire kitchen in a sticky mess.  Her frosting has failed, she fears her cake has failed.  She looks up at me, eyes wide and wet.  

“Mom!  Help me!”

I’ve enjoyed two days of freedom with my husband.  I’ve been delighting in the independence, self-reliance and helpfulness of my children.  I’ve been drinking in the sweet liberty and calm that has been the unexpected gift of this pandemic.   And it’s one hour before my bedtime.

Bob didn’t want a cake.  I don’t want a cake.  I sigh and start with the frosting soup.  I sift powdered sugar and paddle it in with sprinklings of salt until the texture and flavor are restored.  I resent the cloying taste on my tongue.  It ruins my appetite for sausage and peppers.  Then I get to work on the cake, easing it from the pan, trying to keep Ula from hysterics as only half of it comes away.

“We can re-construct it with layers,” I tell her.  But all the while, this little voice snaps and snarks in my brain:

Bob didn’t want a cake.  I didn’t want a cake.  I worked all day…why do I now have to feed seven people for dinner?  Why do I have to cook in this mess?   

I’ve changed.  The young woman who was so eager to nurture her family a few years ago has been pushed aside by this budding crone:  this woman who is slowly learning that her personal survival and the survival of her family,  will rely, to some degree, on her selfishness.  The two aspects of my personality have not yet come to terms with each other.

Ula’s flails as she frosts the cake.  She slaps it in place and it slops everywhere, including my freshly washed hair.  “HEY!”  I yell.  “THINK ABOUT HOW YOU’RE EFFECTING OTHER PEOPLE!!”

And I storm over to the sink to wash my hair a second time.  

…Which brings me back to where I started.  My own harsh words admonish me.  I have a choice.  I can carry on my selfish path, or I can drop my anger and help my kid.  Just because the crone is older doesn’t mean she’s always right.  

I rinse my hair and go stand behind my daughter.  “We got this,” I tell her.  I help her press the chunks of broken cake into place, then glue it down with frosting.  Saoirse jumps in to  prep the potatoes.  Bob makes the coleslaw. Corey sets the table.   I put the sausage and peppers in the oven. Then I go sit down with Grammie  and Pop Pop.  

“He didn’t WANT a birthday cake,” I reflexively repeat as I flop down in a chair.  

Dad looks over his drink at me.  “It’s not about what Bob wants,” he says simply.

And he’s right. Bob already got what he wanted when we were back in those woods.  This is about a celebration.  It’s about putting a party into a pandemic, about family taking care of each other.  It’s about appreciating what’s going well at the very moment it goes well, then stepping outside myself to give someone else a good moment when they need a boost.  We’re all taking turns here.  When one of us is up, we have to help the one who’s down.  

All seven of us sit around the table that night, drinking, talking, sharing stories, making plans, telling jokes.  And I get to see my mom laugh and smile.  We sing Happy Birthday without having to wash our hands, and Bob blows out the candle on a cake that, really, wasn’t meant for him at all.