The Bar

Yesterday was my daughter's fifth birthday. I love to decorate cakes and always ask the kids what they want for their birthday. This year Mattie asked for a Deedee Doodle birthday cake. The majority of this requests was generated from her thumbing through the cake books at Target and the local grocery store. Every time that we are purchasing lunch meat from the deli, the kids love to run over and look at all the airbrushed cakes that are compiled in a binder at the bakery. I am not an airbrusher, but knew that I could grant her request for the Doodlebops cake. As I began to plan for this cake I made some initial sketches and evaluated whether or not I was going to be able to pull off this new feat.

Whenever I make another cake, I attempt to make it bigger and better than the one before it. In August I tried my hand at constructing a cake that had a skeleton. The high heeled shoe that I made turned out very well, but not exactly the way that I wanted it to, due to the materials I used for the skeleton of the shoe. I was not going to make that same mistake with this cake. Everything came together quite well, until about 11:30 pm on Saturday night when I was tired and getting frustrated with the mediums that I was using. The cake was not looking like the prototype did in my head. After sleeping on it, I awoke Sunday morning feeling much better about the cake and what I was attempting. Mattie was thrilled with her cake and I was mostly pleased with the end product.


A friend posed an interesting question for me though: If you have set the bar here for her fifth birthday, what will you need to be making when she turns sixteen? I have never stopped to think about that, nor have I ever lived my life wondering about how high I am setting the bar. I want to put forth my best effort in the present and will worry about how high the bar is when I get to that time. I think that when we choose to do less than we can, in order to preserve our best for later, we are doing ourselves and others a disservice. I have never put forth a mediocre effort on Monday, so that my boss is impressed when I am working at full capacity on Friday. In my opinion, when we do our best today, our best tomorrow will be even better. I do not know what my daughter will ask for her sixteenth birthday cake, but I know that I will be up for the challenge when I get there. The hard and fast reality is that day will be here before I know it, and that is scary!