A RAINBOW KIND OF DAY

When Jenny awoke that morning, she could smell cake baking. The house was clean and shining, the pretty pillows were on the divan, and the good bedspread was on the parlor bedroom bed. At first, she couldn’t remember why she had such a happy, excited feeling at the top of her stomach. The she heard the ice cream freezer turning and she knew that today was the day of her birthday party. She wished Mother had awakened her early, as she didn’t want to waste a single precious moment.

Light hearted and light footed, Jenny bounded out to the kitchen where Mother was bustling about.

“Happy birthday!” Mother exclaimed, and as she patted Jenny gently on the back, she said “One, two, three, four, five, six, and one to grow on.”

“Oh Mother! I bet you’re baking my cake! Can I look in the oven and see it?”

“Just one peek. Here, I”ll open the oven door. I’m afraid you might jar it.”

Mother carefully opened the oven door and Jenny saw two big pink squares baking.

“You’re making pink layer cake, my favorite kind. Oh boy!”

Everyone else had already eaten breakfast. Jenny barely touched her puffed wheat. She hurried out to the north side of the house where Daddy and Margaret were freezing the ice cream.

“I get to lick the paddles ‘cause it’s my birthday.”

Margaret agreeably said, ”Okay.” It was an unspoken law in the family that on your birthday you received all privileges and everyone went out of his way to be kind to you.

Daddy turned Jenny over his knee right where he was sitting and gently paddled her counting, “One two three, four, five, six, and one to be a good girl on.” Jenny giggled and pretended to try to get away.

Margaret descended on her next and patted her (not so gently) on the back, making this opportunity last as long as she could. Jenny didn’t mind, though. It was a birthday spanking, and that couldn’t hurt. The hired man too participated in the birthday spanking and added, “And one not to be so ornery on.”

“Did you see what was on the dining ####room table?” asked Margaret.

They rushed inside and there on the table was a little brown paper sack.

“Well, hurry up and open it and see what it is,” Margaret said impatiently. She was almost as excited today as Jenny was.

Jenny opened the sack and took out a tiny bottle of golden perfume. Daddy and Mother had been watching from the kitchen. Daddy opened the perfume and dabbed some on Jenny’s wrist. How nice it smelled. She felt like a princess. She rubbed her wrist on Margaret’s arm so Margaret would smell nice too.

Birthdays were always lovely, but this afternoon Jenny was to have a party, her first real birthday party. All the boys and girls in the neighborhood and an assortment of cousins were invited, as well as their mothers, for an afternoon of games, balloons and ice cream and cake. Margaret had had just such a party when she was six and she was still talking about it.

The morning passed gloriously. There was the excitement of watching Mother putting a lemon custard filling between the layers and covering the cake with boiled white icing and then putting the six dainty pink candles on top. Jenny wondered how so many wonderful things could be packed into one day. It was like going from one color to another within a big rainbow, each color being as lovely as the next, each looking beautiful beside the others. Daddy and the hired man tried to blow up the balloons with the striped whistles attached, but they were impossible to blow up this way, even with the tire pump, so they just decided to take off the whistles and blow up the balloons and give the whistles separately. This way, the children would still have a whistle after the balloons were inevitably broken. This was even better.

Right after dinner, Jenny had a bath and put on the blue and white organdy dress with her white underskirt and yellow anklets and white Mary Jane shoes and yellow Shirley Temple hair ribbon which Mother had laid out on the bed.

At two o’clock, the guests began arriving, each with a gift for Jenny . She opened each gift as the guests gave them to her and put them in on a pile on the dining room table. There was a
little white silk purse with a beaded duck on the front, there was a coloring book, a water color book, a poem book, hankies, pink rayon panties, blue anklets, red beads, bracelets and more perfume. They made a stack on the dining room table. Jenny carefully placed the ribbons and tissue paper beside the gifts.

When it appeared that all the guests had arrived, Mother took them all down to the draw in the shade of the tall cottonwood trees Daddy had cleared away the branches and brush that morning. They played all the games Jenny loved: Drop the handkerchief, London Bridge, two deep, cat and mouse, Farmer in The Dell, blind man’s bluff, Going to New Orleans, and Mother, May I?
Mothers with very small children and babies stayed at the house and chatted with each other and tended to the needs of the wee ones.

Mother then herded the children back to the house and told them the ice cream and cake would soon be ready. Then she lit the pink candles on the white cake. It was so pretty; the children and mamas all said, “Oooh!” Jenny blew out all but one candle, but she felt that it didn’t matter, as she had forgotten to make a wish anyhow. Mother cut the cake and a couple of the women helped put the slices on plates and dish up the ice cream from the two ice packed five gallon freezers and seated the children around the kitchen table, now made long with extra leaves. Some spilled theirs, some left theirs to melt into pools, but many came back for seconds. Jenny was too excited to eat anything but a few spoonfuls of ice cream and some cake frosting. The mamas had their ice cream and cake in the dining room and parlor.

Each child was issued a balloon. The two and three year old cousins broke theirs right away and wailed in hurt surprise, but there were still the whistles to be given out. Some children went out to the yard to play.

The guests gradually departed. Mother began stacking the sticky dishes and sweeping up the cake crumbs and wiping up the spilled ice cream. Jenny looked through her gifts again. She could hardly wait for Daddy to be home from the field, so she could show them to him. She thought
about how different the house looked, now that the guests had gone. But she was tired, very tired, and the welcoming quiet and the evening were surely the lavender part of the rainbow, the perfect ending of an unmarred, unblemished rainbow kind of day.