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| Note: This is not the cake we made. This year. |
The lead up to the birthday party is sometimes the most hectic, the most stressful. You have to accommodate up to twenty children, sometimes around this many adults as well, feed them, water them, entertain them and impress them; and most of the time the race is on for best birthday party this year. I know, we don't say it's a competition, and we don't make out like it's a battle for parental superiority amongst our friends, we don't seem like we're checking out slice recipes, the patterns on themed napkins and citrus-flavoured beer brands (although this was a tradition I wanted to keep going); but, come on – we all know the truth. We really want ours to be the best, the one that people come away from talking about, the one the kids have the most fun at (I've invented a device that actually measures this for use next year). Whether we have it home, whether we go to a venue, whether we have mini-cupcakes and high tea, or fruit salad and carrot with hommus. What games we should have and what prizes go with it – do we give away party bags at the end, little toys instead, or nothing at all? So many damn decisions to make, and we have to make them three times a year. How long do we expect people to stay, do we provide dinner as well – what about drinks, is everybody drinking this time? Is the theming consistent throughout the whole party – what will be people think if we decide to have a disco party and we start playing funk? Oh, dear – there's so much that could go wrong.......which leads us to the cake.
There is always so much emphasis put on the cake. Is it to be a themed cake, a shaped cake, a picture cake, an ice-cream cake – which will be the most impressive, the one that fits the age of the children and the things that they like, the one that which capture the awe …. of the other parents (you know it!) – you find yourself asking, 'What type of cake defines my child as a person?'
I think by the time you get to our position you just want a cake that doesn't require skewers and an engineering degree to hold it up. No project taught us this more than the tale of the magnificent castle cake that my wife made for Little Miss Mango last year. Days she spent working on this castle, perfecting the turrets, fashioning the dragon, braiding the tiny cake princess's hair, building it three stories high (to scale of course, not literally three stories high although at this stage we probably would of given it a crack) and with jelly moat surrounding with jelly crocodiles and their jelly people victims floating around inside, deciding on a name for the Kingdom (Mangotopia) and a century-by-century breakdown of it's history (one must have context when dining on a kingdom), just to see it all be lost to the devastating effects of the ages and not to the ravishes of hungry party guests. The day of her party, after having a brief battle with a few children's play centres run by fascists on the Sunshine Coast, and their nazi-like policies on cakeage (apparently their cakes are superior – sorry I've been reading a book about World War II), we went off to the only decent one around town (Maze Mania - recommended!). As we went to leave, we covered the cake and walked out the door. In the few seconds it took to get to the car, the Kingdom of Mangotopia was destroyed and it's glorious palace sunk (literally) to it's foundations. Sort of like a balloon deflating, but not in that spectacular way of zipping around the room madly (that would have been a destruction fitting of the cake), but more like a five-day-old balloon, wrinkled and pathetic, that after all it's been through finally gets popped and lets it last breath out in more of a desperate wheeze – a slow death. That's pretty much what the cake did. Now it could have been the cling wrap we put over the top (perhaps to tightly), or the change in air pressure that my father-in-law described, or perhaps, like I suggested a couple of days later after a sudden realisation, that the foundations weren't strong enough and perhaps that sponge is not the strongest base upon which to build such a mighty structure (I suggested some sort of thick mud cake, you know something with a bit more body, cemented four stories under the base of the cake tin - that should do it); whatever it was, there was no stopping it or the inevitable collapse of this once mighty kingdom. All that remained was a sort of soup, of blue icing and sponge, licorice and freckles, jelly babies and marshmallows, and a thousand great spikes sticking up from where the grand designs of the castle once stood. It was kind of depressing. Only because those cake books made it look so damn easy! If anyone has had any sort of perfection with cake-making based on recipes and designs contained within those books, than I have never heard about it. To start with, cutting a cake in the necessary shapes is never as easy as described – as soon as you move to cut it, it collapses under the pressure of the air being pushed toward it from the oncoming knife; because, really – come on, sponge cake is breadcrumbs held together by air anyway, isn't it? Then you have to fit it together, hold it together somehow (usually resulting in the skewers and some gaff tape), ice it (with the artistry of a painter putting together his masterpiece upon a canvas with slightly melted cheese), and then decorate it using whatever you have got in the cupboard because no shops in the free world sell half of the things asked for in the recipe. I think the only way of enjoying putting together a cake is to get drunk at the same time - at least you'll be happy - though the resulting disasterpiece that you meekly put in front of your child the next day with all of your dignity and worth as a parent at stake, may be somewhat lacking in it's aesthetic beauty.
So this year Mrs Mango decided on a single layered, simply designed butterfly cake (although at a disco party I was slightly worried about the connection). It went off without a hitch, although two to three hours were still spent in the icing. Before I knew it, and with very little help from me this year, we were ready for the day. As the minutes tick down to when everyone is to arrive, and there's a lull in momentum as everything is set in place, you try and prepare yourself for what is about to happen, of which you can never really do. Because, to be a honest, the best place for an adult to be at a kids party is hemmed up at the sides, hugging tightly to a wall or fence, and out of the way. It is absolute and unexplainable madness that seems to rush in, fly by and charge out, leaving you spinning where you stood with the single thought, 'What....just....happened......'
I'm not saying it's a bad thing, it's actually an incredible thing, a wonderful thing. It's sort of like a rollercoaster (I guess, not my thing really) – you just have to let yourself lose control for a couple of hours, let things happen, and try to accommodate them when they do. You sort have to live second to second, any conversation you may be having, no matter how in depth, may instantly be halted as you steal away to save some child from jumping off the roof or punching another in the head, never to return. And the thing is, you won't actually remember that you didn't finish having that conversation, and pretty much neither will the person you were talking to, especially if they're also a parent. Actually, it's probably being a parent that makes a kid's birthday party fun, because you know you are in the midst of chaos, there are no illusions of sanity. You have to be like an army general (sorry again), watching the events unfold and reacting accordingly, quickly, and without mercy. At a kid's birthday, any parent can tell any child off (it's kind of liberating actually), every parent must be ready to move at any time, to pick up whichever child nearest them is crying, to answer a question in the middle of making a statement, and dodge when a stray ball or frisbee or pinata comes flying in your direction. Some people probably don't get into it as much as we do, and I too have troubles letting go of control sometimes, but in these times it's really the best thing. It's a wonderful thing in fact, it's like a community, like a tribal village of old, all pitching in, all helping to raise our families, all enjoying this thing called life...... if life was set inside an insane asylum. And you do get these moments amongst the chaos, when you're opening a drink bottle for one child, telling off another and listening sympathetically to a third's very UNfunny joke that you've heard for the fifteenth time and still doesn't make any sense (note to kids: the punchline cannot be the same as the setup, that's not funny!), that you have a second of clarity and realise you are actually enjoying this ludicrousness. There's something good about letting go of our brains sometimes; like watching Transformers, or reading Twilight (fans, please see the disclaimer at the bottom of the page) - something that kind of makes you understand why you had kids, and what all of this means for them. Because although it may be a little stressful for us, crazily busy, incredibly loud and kind of frightening if you stopped to watch the madness for a second, they see it, and will always remember it, in a very different way.
And later, as Little Miss Mango fell asleep in my arms, the kitchen a little messy, the yard in pieces, the dog traumatised, but the house very, very quiet; I basked in the afterglow of insanity and fell asleep hoping it would never end and clutching hopelessly at these moments in life that you can never get back.
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