Eat the Cake

Once, I counted these things in calories. Now, I count them in laughter and the stories told over and over on the ride home. The charcuterie board is no longer fat and salt; it is the hour-long conversation it makes possible. The cake that once felt like moral failure now draws me into memory — each bite a fragile reminder of why we live, and how lucky we are to do so now.

Saturday: chocolate cupcakes in my college roommate’s dining room. She begins, “I love that you…” before dissolving into tears. I look at her, she at me, and my heart swells so full of love it aches. I fear the future I may not see with her, but am overcome with gratitude that our lives intersected in this one.

Sunday: a chocolate mousse cake from my favorite bakery. I blow out the candles under the warmth of the sun, surrounded by the family that has watched me grow.

Monday: Carvel ice cream cake in the kitchen of my post-college apartment. My former high school teachers — now beloved friends — sing to me for the sixth year in a row. I smirk at the memory of how I once longed to turn twenty-one so they could take me for my first legal drink, and soften at the thought of telling them about my cancer. These women walked me through my father’s suicide, taught me to celebrate my birthday instead of mourn it. Much has changed. Much is the same.

Twenty-three years of loving, learning, and living deserves a whole lot of cake.

Last year, turning twenty-two, I believed it would be my last. I threw myself a weekend-long celebration — beach trip, dinner on the water, gold sash. My birthday fell on a chemo day, yet I smiled through the fever that night, thinking of my nurse decorating my room, the hospital staff introducing me to Opry, the service dog, my sister chauffeuring me and ordering takeout. I thought of every text and call, each one proof that I was still here. I could have given the day to self-pity, but instead, I found joy in the mundane, a thrill in the fact that I had touched death five months before and still blew out candles.

This year, my friends and I sit on the floor, lit by a projector’s glow. I play a reel of my twenty-second year, pausing at a Newport dinner where the waitress brought us one of every dessert on the menu. I don’t remember the calories; I remember the invincibility, the barefoot run through summer rain, the refuge in an arcade, the laughter over ski ball.

I wish I could tell last year’s me to be gentler with herself. “Your body has carried you through another year,” I’d say. “There are beautiful adventures ahead. You will face challenges, but you will live through them.”

Life is not perfect, but tonight, with my friends’ voices floating around me, it feels as if it is.
I have begun my twenty-third trip around the sun and wonder, is this the last? My sister and college roommate remind me I said the same thing last year — and I made it. They’re right, but the question still matters. To live with mortality in your hands is to stop waiting for the future and start focusing on the present.

I don’t know if I’ll see twenty-four. But in accepting that I might not, I hold tighter to the gratitude of today.

So, here’s to twenty-three — and to every reason to eat the cake.