Cupcakes

Cupcakes. That’s what I woke up thinking about on Friday, April 23rd, 2010. My son Fischer would be celebrating his 3rd birthday with sticky-faced pals at day care before Memere, my mother, arrived that afternoon. His actual birthday wasn’t for a week. Back then I still believed that supermom was an important aspiration. On this particular day, from-scratch cupcakes remained the yardstick I used to measure my value as a mother. Sometimes I look back at younger me and want to whisper, “You have nothing to prove. You are enough,” and thoughtfully explain how cupcakes don’t determine anything about me. There’s a reason hindsight is so cliché.

Baking reminds me of a tiger I once saw at the San Diego Zoo. Her green eyes scanned the enclosure, sharp and restless. She didn’t make a sound, but everything about her screamed confinement. It was obvious she didn’t belong there. The anxiety wasn’t subtle. It vibrated through the stillness, the way something wild does when caged. Unlike cooking, baking nags me to comply with the rules of chemistry and reminds me of my mother because it’s bossy, anxiety-provoking, and confining. My mother loves to bake. Cooking feels like creative freedom where I can make mistakes, establish my own rules, and still end up with something edible, delicious, and beautiful. Cooking is my habitat, and baking is my cage. My mother hates to cook and my father loves it. No wonder they divorced. Like smoke, the simplicity of cupcakes lingers somewhere between free and confined. And despite my best efforts, I didn’t make cupcakes that day.

Discomfort forced me out of bed as my belly tightened on schedule every seven minutes. I knew exactly what this meant. I was in labor. And instead of concerning myself with the logistics of safely delivering a life I’d grown for nearly a year, my primary concern was the sense of failure I felt in handing over a plastic container of store-bought cupcakes, with their blue frosting and palm oil and pretense.

My husband spent the first part of the day chauffeuring me around in our white Volvo wagon while I timed my errands between contractions. Tight clenching fists tearing at my cervix, deep, slow breaths, sweat on leather seats—and then approximately five to seven minutes to complete the next task: deposit my paycheck, drop off my son, grab some food. Life didn’t stop because I was having a baby.

We arrived at the Birth Center when I could no longer endure the pain of sitting in the car. His delivery was quiet and simple. After two hours of pain so deep that death seemed like a better alternative to pushing out a baby, Alder was thrust into the world, placed into my arms, and like the warm, calm waters I swam in Fiji, I became lost in his sparkling blue eyes. This time it didn’t feel so scary holding a baby that fresh. I was terrified after delivering my first son—so much so that I deferred all immediate post-birth duties to my husband out of fear of hurting him or exposing myself as a new-mother-imposter, clueless about how to navigate a human that small. All I could manage when Fischer was born was stuffing my face with pre-sliced pineapple, confused that anyone would let someone so inexperienced take home such a fragile little being. This time, muscle memory triggered my autopilot switch as I nursed Alder and pressed his bare skin onto my exposed chest. When I reflect on these moments after his birth and in the months that followed, I experience jealousy of the person I was then, like time in the Garden before Eve went rogue. It wasn’t until a few years later that we learned he would develop autism so severe he would likely be an adult child in need of our forever care. And that’s not why anyone chooses to become a parent. I always said I live life without regret. Yet I struggle to forgive myself for not taking those few moments after his birth and in his first year of life to fully experience the version of him that existed before his diagnosis.

We left the Birth Center two hours after Alder took his first breath and headed straight to Target. I pushed the cart to stay upright, my body so weak I couldn’t stand on my own. My feet shuffled slowly toward the diaper aisle, and I used the cart like my grandfather used his walker in the years before he died. I could have sent my husband in, just like I could have bought cupcakes, but much like my time leading up to his delivery, the time following his birth became utilitarian—an opportunity to avoid acknowledging the trauma my body had just endured and prove to myself how strong I was. I still don’t understand why I’m compelled to prove this. Perhaps, like a toddler, I still thought if I covered my eyes with my hands, no one could see me. And if no one could see me, I didn’t exist—not to them, not even to myself—and I could disappear into the fray, no need to look back.

It didn’t occur to me until my friends pointed it out much later that it is completely abnormal for a woman to go to a department store mere hours after delivering a child. In fact, most women rest—something I genuinely didn’t realize was an option for me. I wasn’t used to resting. A 32-year-old perpetual overachiever, I had finished my master’s degree and was teaching as an adjunct at the University of Montana. My husband and I built a house with our bare hands while living in our 1984 Volkswagen Vanagon. We started a small farm and operated a business, had two children, and chose to live 1,200 miles from family. Looking back, it’s obvious to me that Jay and I both escaped the clutches of childhood trauma by hiding in Montana, hiding in work and school, hiding in anything that kept us busy enough to avoid facing the hard things we left in the dust trail as we ran forward together. It’s funny how raising children often forces us to look at the things we avoid, even for decades, and can’t outpace.

I used to think cupcakes mattered. That baking them from scratch somehow meant I was doing it right. That a perfect swirl of frosting could disguise the quiet unraveling I felt inside. I thought being a good mom meant showing up with the homemade treat, the clean house, the polished version of motherhood that looked so good from the outside.

But nothing about Alder’s life—about our life—has gone according to the recipe.

There was no amount of from-scratch batter or Pinterest-worthy birthday prep that could prepare me for what it would mean to raise a child who wouldn’t speak, who wouldn’t sleep, who would scream for hours without a reason I could understand. There was no frosting thick enough to sweeten the weight of knowing your child might never live on his own. And yet, there is beauty in this kind of motherhood too. Not because it’s tidy or impressive, but because it demands something deeper—presence, surrender, resilience.

Sometimes I still catch myself trying to prove something, reaching for the old measuring sticks—productivity, perfection, effort. But when I look at Alder, at everything he’s taught me about what it means to live outside the lines, I remember: I don’t need cupcakes to be enough. I never did.