Let Them Eat Cake

First published in the Chicago Tribune

Here’s how it ends: everyone’s fine and one cake was delicious. Here’s how it began: On my sister’s birthday, mom had surgery to blast two kidney stones. How the day unfolded will become funny family lore in a few years. Right now it’s just fodder for therapy.

At dawn, Betsy called me. “I’m picking up a chocolate fudge cake from Deerfield’s Bakery, and a coconut cake from The Bent Fork. I couldn’t decide which I wanted, so I ordered both.”

“Happy birthday and yum. How’s Mom?” In our family, Betsy is the official switchboard.

“She’s out of surgery. Everything’s fine. Dad’s taking her home now and I’m going over. By the way, do you think Dad will remember it’s my birthday?”

As the baby of the family, Betsy’s convinced she’s the forgotten child. I always correct that misconception, reminding her that she’s not forgotten. She’s just a mistake. “He’ll remember,” I say, silently calculating the odds against it.

Five minutes later, Betsy called back. “So as I was driving to Mom’s, Dad was leaving. He stopped to roll down his window….”

“Did he say Happy Birthday?” I asked.

“Nope. He was glad I was getting there to see Mom, whom he’d just left. Can you believe that?” It took no stretch of the imagination to believe that.

A few hours passed, and I started getting a lot of phone calls, none of which I saw because I am notorious for never looking at my phone. Here’s what transpired while I was off the grid.

Around noon, Betsy passed the nursing baton to our sister-in-law, Claudia. Betsy went to lunch with a friend to celebrate her birthday. While at the restaurant, Betsy noticed first a fire truck, and then an ambulance, racing in the direction of our childhood home. “What are the odds they’re going for Mom?”

Betsy asked her friend. As she reached for her phone, it rang.

“The EMT guys are here,” Claudia shouted. “How fast can you get here?”

Betsy arrived at Mom’s before the ambulance left for the hospital. The details are fuzzy, but the gist of it is that Mom’s fever spiked, her blood pressure dropped, and as Claudia caught her and held her, Mom’s eyes glazed and she was non-responsive. Somehow Claudia held Mom, called 911, and administered CPR, all while telling Mom in no uncertain terms, “You can’t die on my watch!”

When Betsy called Dad to alert him, he answered by saying, “I know why you’re calling!” He then started to sing Happy Birthday.

“Dad,” Betsy interrupted, “stop singing!”

He kept singing. By the time he finished, Betsy and Claudia were in their cars, following the ambulance to the Emergency Room.

When Mom recovered enough to look around, she saw eight family members and two birthday cakes ensconced at her bedside. Her first words? “Oooh. Coconut cake!” I’m no MD, but even I knew that meant she would be fine.

Betsy, however, was suffering. It turns out the chocolate fudge cake was dry.