The oven is ready, but my batter looks lumpy. I poke through it with my spatula, blending the mixture until the blobs disappear. When at last I gaze into a pool of smooth chocolate, I pour the batter into a dozen muffin cups and put the pan into the oven.
As the smell of chocolate swells through the air, I take comfort in knowing that I have done something concrete. Cupcakes are real—you can hold them in your hand—and today I need something like that.
My little boy turns one year old today, and I’m baking cupcakes to celebrate. But as much as I’d like to turn this into a typical birthday, I can’t. Two things stand in my way. First, my son is not here to celebrate. And second, I am not yet his mother.
—
Two years ago my husband and I decided to look into adoption. We gathered information on agencies for weeks before signing on with one. For six months after that, we collected papers for our dossier and learned about attachment disorders, child development, medical issues. A social worker wrote a summary of our parental qualifications. We filled out piles and piles of forms. Then we waited.
Eleven months later, we made our first trip to Moscow. There, we finally met the baby boy who would become our son. As we played with him in the stark, uncarpeted anteroom at Orphanage No. 12, we fell hopelessly in love, marveling at his easygoing, playful spirit. We promptly signed off on yet another pile of forms, this one making our request to adopt him official. We decided to name him A.J., short for Andrei James. At last, after meeting our child, it no longer mattered how much time had passed. All memory of the hours, days and months lost to waiting simply faded away.
But now we’re waiting again. We had to leave our son in Moscow until the courts decide we can bring him home, and so far the courts have not acted. Until they do, we can only leaf through the stack of pictures we took in Moscow and watch our favorite video, the one where A.J. teeters across the anteroom behind his push-walker, his expression so earnest and full of concentration that we can’t help laughing in delight every time we see it.
—
“Ready for a cupcake?” I ask as we clear the dinner dishes.
“You bet,” my husband says.
I place our favorite photo of A.J. in the center of the table. Then I grab a small plate from the cupboard and place a single cupcake on it. I poke a candle into the top of the cupcake and reach for a match. My husband flips the switch as I light the candle, and there we stand in the semi-dark: two parents, one cupcake, and a snapshot of our baby son. My husband starts in on “Happy Birthday.” I join him and we finish the song together. The candle flickers, its happy glow reflected in the glass of the picture frame.
“Make a wish,” I say, in a voice as bright as I can muster. In the silence that follows, we stand arm-in-arm before the glowing candle. I think back to that day in Moscow, when our little boy toddled across the room behind his push-walker as we cheered him on. When he finally toddled into the space directly before me, I scooped him up in my arms. He grinned as I lifted him over my head and told him what a good boy he was.
Together my husband and I blow out the candle, and I turn on the lights so we can eat our cupcakes.
Andrea Vij lives in Massachusetts with her husband and 23-month-old son, A.J., who finally arrived home in April 2010. Her writing has appeared in “Adoptive Families” magazine, “Bay State Parent” magazine, and the online magazine literarymama.com, where this essay was first published. She blogs about her family’s adoption experience at littlevij.blogspot.com.
