more candles
I gather plates for Adam’s birthday cake; they clink in my hands. He wanted chocolate–the cake (the frosting, the ice cream), and I have already carried it in, along with the knife, long and shiny and sharp. The cake looks imperfect, and therefore perfect for us, shaped like a sweet, dark hill. I placed the glass stand in front of Kevin for serving; he carves cakes, traditionally, the way another father maybe carves a celebratory bird.
“Do you want candles?” I ask Adam, because we aren’t standard really about anything, and the details have their years and sometimes take years to develop.
At five, Adam hated the happy birthday song; at twelve, he refused to let us sing it or anything else. Now, he laughs–big, deep chuckles–while we sing to him. He even let Alexa sing to him this morning, including a version of Happy Birthday performed by mewling cats. But he hated that one, softly murmured, “Oh, that’s okay, no thank you,” because the cats finished with a digital growl. Adam opposes any kind of growling, for any reason.
We will have no balloons today. On Riley’s birthday, I used to fill her room with one balloon for every year, but when she opened her door, the balloons would wander down the hall, and Adam would shriek. He treats balloons like bombs, winces when other people touch them, anticipating the inevitable pop as the balloons slide against their fingers. It’s hard for us to imagine, living life hearing every single sound; the experience keeps him skittish.
For a while, Adam also viewed candles with wary suspicion. In the early years, I could see him wondering why anyone would wish to ruin a good dessert by adding little tiny fires that very well might burn someone. Before I learned to ask if Adam wanted candles, he would stand so far away from the cake he couldn’t blow them out. Not to mention that at least for our Autistic two, the difference between blowing and sniffing has long caused considerable confusion. Sometimes even now when I lift something to Adam’s nose–hey, smell this, he exhales. And as for making wishes, well, I’m still not sure Adam really knows what that word means.
It took me a number of years to allow the expectations I conceived ahead of my children–my soft-focus plan for mothering, my longing for certain experiences of their childhood–to die. I don’t want to minimize that grief. In fact, to this day I encourage every exceptional parent I meet to fully feel that letting go, to cry over it, to admit how much it hurts, because it does. It’s a ripping pain, a birthing of death. But death gives way to life. Also, I tell the same parents what I have learned, that as with any grief, sometimes this pain suddenly returns, rising again like a tide, and that’s okay too. For a while, as I worked through my own grief, I bargained with the situation. No, really I fought. I bought Adam toys he would have loved if he were not Autistic; I insisted we keep traditions, even when my children resisted. Those years, Adam bent at the waist and sniffed his birthday candles from afar, wearing a pained expression, until eventually, I blew them out. “See? Easy,” I would say, though nothing about it felt easy to any of us.
As I’ve learned to let things die in me, I’ve learned to love my children as they are, as they’ve been, as they will be, and I’ve watched new joys come to life. So now I ask Adam, “Do you want candles on your cake?”
“Yes,” he says, and grins.
It took Adam a few weeks to remember how old he would be on his birthday, even though it’s a milestone year, marking another decade. We kept asking, amused that even in this Adam behaves like a man old enough to know that the years only matter because of what you learned and how well you lived them. He stumbled over the question for a while, fumbling because he forgot he should remember how to answer it. I taught him to do the math because I know he can appreciate the numbers, and something about the situation hurt me, that while he’s still young enough to be asked, and everyone asks, he should have to wear that awkward, pained expression.
This became our game for a while, me asking him, “How old will you be on your birthday”, him considering the problem, until finally, he answered correctly and smiled.
Nearly every day, Adam reminds me: We live as strangers and foreigners here. It means we can’t quite understand all the crazy customs, and also that we should never do something just because everyone else does. Adam teaches me: Live honestly. Be polite, as often as you can. Try to be kind. Worship hard. And it’s okay not to have all the lingo down, not to know exactly what to say.
I had made the cake the day before, and Zoe and Kevin tried to convince Adam to eat it early. There would be plenty to eat all weekend, they reasoned, but Adam insisted we wait. “No, Saturday,” he said simply, spinning around the kitchen that night as he dried the dishes. It suits him, this exactitude, this careful observance of the day of his arrival here. There is a day for everything, and Saturday was the right day for cake.
Kevin opens the plastic container of birthday candles now, asks Adam, “How many? Two?”
“Yes,” Adam says, chuckling lightly as Kevin selects a few candles, half-tall nubs we’ve burned before, and presses them into the cake.
“Is that good? Or more?”
“More.” The last vowel sound swoops with joy, and I look up in surprise. Old things die, but then new things live.
Kevin, who like any good Father loves the sound of his son’s voice, tilts the container down. The candles tumble closer to the edge so Adam can see them.
“Which one?”
“Green.”
“Green with dots? Or green with stripes?”
Adam laughs, says, “Green with stripes.”
“Where?” Kevin asks, gesturing toward the cake.
Adam points, decidedly, “Over there.”
Kevin presses a candle–green, with stripes–on the slope of Chocolate Hill, where it stands like a crooked Winter tree. “Is that good?”
“Oh, more,” Adam says, gesturing toward the container.
“Okay, which one?” This continues, Adam grinning wider still, adding more and more candles, until they wander down one side of the cake like a flock. One lone candle stands on the other side, set apart. It looks like visual math, like all the past years gathered wonky and falling away, plus the new year, springing up.
I watch Adam’s face while Kevin lights the candles, all those tiny fires, all those dancing flames. Adam only smiles, as though the years of foreign life have taught him what they have also taught me, that every potential for pain also carries potential for celebration.
Adam laughs, delighted, as Kevin places the cake in front of him, as the warm glow of all those candles chases shadows away from his cheeks. Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, we sing. Adam doesn’t wince or pull away; He doesn’t rise from his chair or wander to safety. Instead, when we finish our song, he softly blows–blows–out every flame, saving that one lone candle for last.
