Blogocentric Formulations

A Pandemic-Al Birthday

On March 20, 2020, my daughter turned one year old. There were big plans that involved for this first birthday: tasty treats, games, and a big party with friends and family from all over, including grandparents who were going to fly in for the occasion.

There were just two teeny tiny problems with these big plans.

First, the week prior, pretty much the entire state went into quarantine because of COVID-19. Flights had to be canceled, plans to gather were scratched, and businesses didn't have anyone working to fulfill the orders for the treats and other things we had ordered. We literally went from, "Yay, big celebration!" to "Looks like we're celebrating at home" almost overnight.

Second, for those of you who still remember the early days of the pandemic, this was also in those first few weeks where people were freaking the fuck out and panic buying everything. You'd go to the grocery store (assuming you could even get in thanks to the long lines) and entire shelves would be raided. No toilet paper or paper towels anywhere. No milk, no dry or canned goods, no basic necessities like, for example, the ingredients for a birthday cake, or even a prepackaged cake mix.

We were quickly headed for a first birthday with no people, no treats, nothing.

Thankfully, we had enough raw ingredients at home to make a semblance of a cake. Flour and sugar, the last of our eggs, some of our precious little milk left... I even made a chocolate frosting by melting down chocolate chips and old Hershey chocolate bars. Some of the ingredients were pretty old and stale, and we had to use regular sugar instead of powdered sugar for the frosting, so it wasn't the best cake I've ever made... but it was her first time having anything chocolate and, well, she seemed to think it was okay.

         

After what started as real discouragement about all the things the pandemic had taken from our daughter in terms of experiences for her first birthday, we ultimately walked away from the day really treasuring the simplicity of what we were forced to make do with instead. Rather than a big party with lots of friends, it was a small, intimate celebration with just the four of us. Rather than a ton of presents and pomp and circumstance, we opened the small handful of presents we had already purchased, wrapped in holiday and other non-birthday wrapping paper that we had available already. And rather than buying fancy, professionally-decorated treats, the whole family participated in making a cake together from scratch.

It wasn't the birthday party that any of us had hoped for just a few weeks prior, but in looking back on that day I'm not sure there would have been anything else that could have made it as memorable as it was, even against the backdrop of panicked scrambling to adjust to living in pandemic conditions.


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