It was just going to be the worst BIRTHDAY ever and there was nothing I could do to stop it. It was going to be more embarrassing than peeing the bed.

Virginia, Aunt Thelma’s daughter, had decorated the dining room the day before the party.

The Sunday best lace tablecloth with roller coaster swirls which was usually reserved for preacher dinners signaled the importance of the occasion. Store bought birthday plates, matching napkins, plastic cups and utensils waited in anticipation.

Red and white crepe paper streamers twisted together were attached to the ceiling light over the table and the lines secured at each corner of the table. Clusters of colorful balloons completed the decor. All of that was fine and met with my five-year-old approval.

The disaster was happening in the kitchen.

Aunt Thelma was making a homemade pound cake and seven-minute frosting. Everyone, who knew anything, knew you had to have a sheet cake from the bakery for a child’s birthday party, not homemade. That would be embarrassing enough, but what when on next was mortifying.

Stunned, I watched her divide part of the batter into three small bowls before pouring most of the batter into the circular cake pan.  She squeezed drops from the little plastic bottles of food coloring. Drop, drop, drop. The batter in one bowl was tinted red, another green, and the last blue. Then she spooned dollops of the tinted batters into the middle of the plain batter. Using a knife, she gently dragged the blade through the tinted dollops.,

I was horrified at the thought. The inside of my cake was going to look like mud. The cake was ruined; my party was ruined. She had lost her mind and everyone at the party was going to be a witness.

My face was red hot with anger, fist clenched, tears streaming down my face.   I cried,”How could you!”

Tired and tried from my whining, she ordered me out of the kitchen, “Go out in the yard and play. Now.”

The next time I saw the cake it was iced, curls and peaks of seven-minute frosting hiding the catastrophe.

Maybe we could just not have cake.

Too soon, friends from my kindergarten class and several cousins arrived, the song was sung, the candles extinguished, and it was time to cut the cake.

No escape.

Aunt Thelma asked me for my plate. I passed it to her and looked away when she handed me the first slice.

The children gasped looking at the cake on my plate.

Then I looked too.

The design looked like a red bird in a tree.

All the children pushed their plates forward, clambering to get the next slice.

It was a blue bunny!