It is possible she had never seen cake before today, but she has now, and something deep and beastly stirs within her tiny chest. Quite absurdly, given that she was surely only born a few days ago, my tiny, irascible daughter has just turned one, so we have gathered the exact number of persons we can reasonably fit in our kitchen to celebrate. Every single plate and bowl we have is doing double duty for the guests assembled. A life spent entirely in small flats has meant that, though we are now theoretically capable of hosting more than three surplus people, we have not updated our stocks of crockery to reflect this. Nor have we enough chairs, so the older children in attendance are being fed outside on patio furniture, on the first afternoon this year for which alfresco dining might be judged remotely possible, albeit not necessarily desirable.
My daughter has spent the day smiling, because she loves people, presents, and coloured paper, and the occasion has produced all three in larger than usual quantities. A few of our guests have not seen her since this smile developed the four chompers which now beam back as she smashes gifts and people with abandon, her teeth a symmetrical 2 up, 2 down arrangement that’s never looked more winningly charming. She only started sleeping through the night a few weeks ago, which has improved her mood greatly in all other areas, and perhaps added to the exaggerated, mystifying sense that she is clearly little more than a newborn, and could not possibly be one-year-old at all.
She has mostly taken it in her stride, ripping through wrapping paper, throwing her presents about, and happily cavorting with Clodagh, who only requires freeing from her younger cousin’s excitable death grip twice. The meaning behind all this hoopla obviously escapes the birthday girl herself but, in the manner of the Duchess of Edinburgh, tapping her foot through a parkour demonstration that’s being filmed for local news, she does a good job of evincing appreciation for a ceremony she cannot possibly understand.
That is until the lights are dimmed, and we all stop what we’re doing to sing Happy Birthday to her in excited, if discordant, unison. I approach her with the cake my sister Maeve has made, together with a kitchen knife and a flaming sparkler in the shape of a big number 1. Her initial reaction is not dissimilar to the jerk of horror you might get if you approached a baby with, well, a kitchen knife and a flaming object, I guess. But then she spots the cake beneath, and everything changes.
Her mouth is open, her arms are flailing, and her eyes are as wide as the upturned tin lid we’re reduced to serving the cake with. Once the sparkler is removed, she launches for it with the passion of someone who knows exactly what cake is and where it should go. In this case, all over her mouth, eyes and scalp, jammed into her face with the alacrity of a drowning man gasping for spongey, cream-filled air. She’s barely left our arms in this longest, shortest year, but there’s still plenty we have to learn about our baby. We raise egg cups of wine to our lips in jubilation. She may only have four teeth, but they are irrefutably sweet.
Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? by Séamas O’Reilly is out now (Little, Brown, £16.99). Buy a copy from guardianbookshop at £14.78
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