Birthday Cake

“I’ll just go with the bologna sandwich, Ernie,” the old man grumbled as he smiled a thank you to the man behind the counter.

“Sure thing, Mr. Conroy,” Ernie replied. He took out two bags and handed them to the elderly man. “I’m throwing in the yesterday’s bread with your order; no charge.”

“Thank you. That’s very kind, Ernie. And I’m sure if they could, the ducks would thank you as well,” Mr. Conroy tipped his hat as he walked out the door.

It was a warm morning, particularly warm considering how early in the spring it was. But the park was still fresh with the smell of dew on the grass. Mr. Conroy rested his aging body on a wooden bench facing the small pond. The aged wood responded with a whispering creak. He set the two brown paper bags at his side and let the sun warm his face from every direction.

Senility had not set in and Mr. Conroy refused to surrender to a life as a curmudgeon. His bones felt hollow and brittle, connected with rusted joints and hinges, held together by withered gristle and all packed loosely within the wrinkled, yellow parchment of his skin. His strength had dwindled to the point where a thick sweater would weigh too heavily on the old man’s shoulders.

The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deepened as he squinted at the silver and gold flakes of sun floating on the pond’s surface. A small gray figure interrupted the pattern, slicing it into a modest “V” trailing behind it. The gray turned to white as Mr. Conroy’s cool cobalt eyes focused its pupils revealing the hungry duck in front of him.

Mr. Conroy took out the bread and as soon as the rustle of the brown paper bag echoed into the air, the hungry duck was no longer the only duck in front of the old man. He broke the loaf in half and indulged in the feeling of the cracking crust against his fingers. He pinched the soft cotton innards of the bread and tossed the bits towards his feathered comrades. Mr. Conroy smiled to himself and reached into the other bag for his sandwich. There was, however, an unexpected addition to his order other than the ducks’ and his lunch.

He pulled out a mysterious confection that he did not remember ordering, nor could he recall if anyone else may have ordered it resulting in Ernie placing it in his bag by mistake. Mr. Conroy lifted the colorful cupcake to his face and inspected it carefully as if looking for clues to its origins. The ducks waddled around his ankles anticipating some of that cup-shaped bread. The only thing to steal Mr. Conroy’s focus from the phantom desert was the site of the young children in the distance. The laughs and the smiles seemed to outshine the spring sun as he gazed in envy. Youth had seemed too far away for him to recollect.

“I’ll just return this cupcake to Ernie,” Mr. Conroy remarked to himself, “I’m sure it was all just a mistake.” The cupcake beckoned to him through the paper bag. The sweet smell of the cake and the creamy top that sat so whimsically on top of it had emitted its sweet aroma into the air drawing the old man’s face toward the bag.

“Well, I guess a taste couldn’t hurt,” he reasoned, “My birthday is tomorrow after all.” And with that he looked around to avoid witnesses of his would-be crime. He ran his finger along the edge of the paper cup slowly dragging against the icing. This created a sweet bulb on the tip of his finger without leaving any evidence that any icing was taken at all. It was a trick that he had taught to himself at the tender age of seven and had perfected the method in the following years.

Mr. Conroy licked the icing clean off of his fingertip and closed his eyes at the feel of the velvety icing in his mouth. As soon as he opened his eyes again, he had felt invigorated. He had felt a surge of energy within him that he had not felt since he first learned how to steal icing from cupcakes. The smile on his face stretched his cheeks. He looked around again for anymore witnesses and in a fit of feeling like a child again, he took one giant bite out of the dessert.

His eyes grew wide and the knots in his stomach tightened with guilt over what he had done. Mr. Conroy’s hands raced to put the rest of the half eaten cupcake back into the paper bag. However, it was not the petty theft that he had just committed that concerned him the most, but the hands that had just put the cupcake back into the bag. They were not the hands of an old man, but those of a seven year old boy!

“It must be the cupcake!” he thought to himself, “I’m no longer Mr. Conroy! I’m Ben again!”

His heart began to flutter not in panic or excitement but with the resonance of youth. He shot up from the park bench and smiled the largest smile a boy can make. Ben raised his hands to embrace the sky. He felt the sun try to fight through his eyelids, but only the reds of the sunlight managed to sneak through. With his feet, he struggled out of his shoes and tugged his socks off and jumped onto the gravel and sand that met the water of the pond. His toes wiggled about like worms confused whether it was escaping the ground or burying itself.

One of the ducks approached him. He reached out and touched its delicate head, which the bird reluctantly tolerated. What Ben found most astounding was not that he had the energy and physicality of his seven year old self, but the wonder, the innocence, the insatiable curiosity of a young boy. It was the curiosity that had long been extinguished by the smothering of some ignorant teacher or the temptation of prestige that tragically is so easily confused with growing up.

Ben’s bare feet hopped onto the hot pavement. It seared his heels for an instant. He didn’t care. They slapped onto the rough concrete in excited rhythm. With a head start he leapt from the walkway to the grass. He hunted for spots still cool with the dew of the morning. Spikes dug unto the soles of his feet before kowtowing to his the weight they held up leaving a footprint of bent blades of grass. As he lifted each foot, he smiled in wonder at the resilience of some of the blades leaping back up almost in defiance to his seven year old feet.

He ran to the playground, and plunged his feet into the sand. Ben got on his knees and swirled his hands into the fine grains beneath him. The seven year old senior citizen picked out the bits of bark and leaves in a spot of sand and lifted handfuls in front of his face and let it rain through his tiny fingers. The world was veiled behind a haze of playground sand when he spotted an empty spot at the swings.

He lifted his tiny frame onto the leather strap at held tightly to the rubber coated chain that suspended him. Ben dug in his naked toes into the sand and walked back three giant steps. There was a crescent ditch just beneath the swing dug by previous riders when they wanted to stop. But Ben had no intention of getting off the swing anytime soon. Propping himself up against the pull of gravity he kicked his feet up into the air in a storm of flying sand to fling himself into a good stride over the ditch.

Ben became a bob for this massive pendulum bending the knees at the peak of his rising to quicken the trip backwards. Then the feet kicked forward again, using his own momentum to fling him towards the sky. Each to and from motion, each back and forth endeavor brought him closer to the sun, or at least to that elusive event of actually overshooting and doing a loop-de-loop on a swing set.

As the swing cut swiftly through the air, Ben would close his eyes at every backwards motion and indulge in the illusion of chaos, the fear of swinging out of control and onto the ground below. In every forward motion, his eyes were wide open, squinting only for the sun as he pretended to be a pilot swooping dangerously close to sea level.

Eventually he would tire on his swing set adventure, extending his tiny legs to touch the ground beneath him, skidding along the sand to slow himself down, digging the crescent ditch even deeper than before. He had slowed the motion of the swing to a safe pace and readied himself for the dismount. Sure, Ben could have halted the swing completely and walked away, but what was the use of a renewed youth if he did that?

One. Two. Three! And off he went jumping at the peak of the gentle upswing landing perfectly on the mound of sand his feet had created. He smiled and breathed to himself. He thought of the blessing of having his young body back, but the wisdom of his old self was maintained. His chest heaved outwards, then deflated inwards as he caught his breath. Fatigue is not in a seven-year- old’s vocabulary, which is why he darted up the slide, then down the slide, then up the slide, then down the slide. Hands up or down, on his belly or on his back, feet first or head first, if there was a way of going down a slide, young Ben thought of it and slid down the slide that way.

He walked back to the park bench, yawning as if he were about to devour the clouds of the sky. His tiny hands balled up and rubbed into his eyes. The young boy on the outside wondered what sort of sorcery had drained him of his energy. Exhaustion had crept up on him quietly, but steadily. The old man on the inside knew it was time to take a nap. Ben climbed up on to the bench and sat down, refusing to let his eyelids win the battle.

“Maybe if I feed the ducks,” the young boy whispered to himself, “I won’t fall asleep.” But before he could tear off a second crumb, his tired head is thrown back and sleep had taken over completely. When he awoke, Ben was Mr. Conroy again. His wrinkles were back but seemed more like supple lines than rigid cracks. He looked at his hands which had returned to him in his sleep, not with regret but with a sort of nostalgia. Mr. Conroy had returned from his vacation from his own age and smiled at the wondrous memory.

“Was it all a dream?” he wondered. The old man looked at his side, and into the brown paper bags but found no evidence of any cupcake anywhere. He smacked his lips together, and flapped his tongues against the inside of his cheeks. The taste of the icing was still there, but there was no dessert, not a single crumb to be found. He looked back and saw that the swing was still swinging. The ducks jumped back into the water and flapped the water off their backs. Mr. Conroy stood on his feet and felt the hollowness of his fragile skeleton, but could only remember the sensation of swinging.

He had returned to the deli the next day to order his usual sandwich and day old bread. The smile on his face had become more than curls on the corner of his lips. Ernie came out form the back room with his usual warm voice and a handshake to welcome any customer, old or new.

“Happy Birthday, Mr. Conroy,” Ernie greeted, “Well, a bleated one, anyway. Why didn’t you tell me it was your birthday yesterday?”

“How did you--?” the old man stopped himself as he realized, “I see your wife and my daughter haven’t outgrown the age of gossip quite yet.”

“I guess we can’t outgrow everything,” Ernie answered with a chortle.

“I couldn’t agree more,” the old man replied, “Nor would we want to. Well, I suppose the reason that I didn’t tell you is because one loses count of one’s age after the number of candles exceeds how much breath is in these lungs. ”

“Ha! That’s a good one.”

“But thank you so much for the greeting, Ernie.”

“Just the usual, Mr. Conroy?”

“Yes,” Mr. Conroy answered. He stopped himself and raised a hand at Ernie. “Actually, Ernie… Do you have any cupcakes?”