My birthday was pretty great. I went camping on the Maine coast, and had a home-cooked meal with chocolate-mousse cake and champagne, and I heard from a lot of friends. I also found a crisp, folded $20 bill in the pocket of the exact coat I have been wanting for this winter—my size and in perfect condition—on the rack for $10 at the Goodwill. You couldn’t ask for a better birthday.
And today I have another reason to eat cake, only this time the candle I light will be in memory of my Islet of Langerhans’ now-forsaken beta-cell neighborhood, which I sometimes imagine as a tumbleweedy ghost town. It’s been five years to the day since I was diagnosed with insulin-dependent diabetes, which was the biggest of big deals, in that it meant the end of one way of living and the start of something else entirely: the enormous responsibility of trying to mathematically mimic a delicately balanced hormonal process, multiple times a day, every day. And it will never be as bad as those first few days, when I was so sick that even breathing made me tired, nor will it ever again be as emotionally taxing, even though some days I am still tempted to throw my meter against the wall. And I am grateful for the saintly people who have dealt with me and supported me through it, and I am grateful also for my own understanding of it, because if I didn’t understand it as well as I do now, I would still be very afraid of it. Which would mean I wouldn’t be embarking on baking the most ridiculous cake I’ve ever made—involving three tiers, fudge sauce, marshmallows and a kitchen torch (if I can find one)—as a symbolic high-five to myself for five years of hard work. Wait til you see it.
