Bake sales and breakdowns

We all have things that made our heart pound, our palms sweat and our knees weaken.

For my 3-year-old son, it’s the appearance of a comb and the words ‘It will just take two minutes’.

For me? Well, it used be the announcement that my regular hairdresser was on holidays and I’d be put in the not-so-capable hands of Jackie, the trainee, but now it’s the appearance of the letter that announces the latest school bake sale.

This letter is never given to me by someone who suggests I sit down first. It’s never prefaced with a gentle ‘Now, you’re not going to like this, but it will be OK, I promise’. And it’s never proffered by someone who places the document in one hand and a family-sized bar of Fruit n Nut in the other.

No, it’s left for me to find mere days before the event takes place while searching for my daughter’s swimming togs in the dark abyss I call The Hobby Cupboard. (I was so ambitious when I first moved in, wasn’t I?)

The letter usually lies forgotten at the bottom of her school bag amongst collapsed juice boxes and half eaten bananas; a crumpled piece of paper existing solely to remind me that I was absent the day God handed out traditionally maternal talents like sewing, baking and flower-arranging, but this time I found it disintegrating amongst still- damp swimming paraphernalia. It’s nice to mix things up, I suppose.

The arrival of the bake sale signals the arrival of my acute shame that I never managed to mirror my mother’s prowess in the kitchen and rustle something up out of nothing. No, I have to resort to my old Home Economics book from secondary school in a bid to make something that looks vaguely edible. (The back page informs me I loved Gary from 4 C in my second year, by the way. Believe me, you would have too.)

A scene from the book I Don’t Know How She Does It flashes through my mind as I peer into cupboards searching for the correct utensils and I scoff at the depiction of a hassled, working mum, who, like me, was frantically baking for a school fair. That woman had a rolling pin, for crying out loud! I mean, she’s got me beat already.

I arrived early to the school fete in an attempt to be a ‘real mum,’ clutching a half-baked apple tart and carrying the half-baked notion that working full-time makes me less of a mum than my own stay-at-home mum. When really, whether you’re a stay-at-home mum or a working mum, none of us are  ‘real mums,’ for this title is reserved solely for Mary Berry who, when you think about it, is a mum to all of us.

When I spy the sticky toffee puddings, the lemon meringue pies and rocky road slices, I wonder if my daughter notices the difference between what I lay on the table and the platters of confectionary you’d actually want to eat.

She does, because she pulls me down towards her so she can whisper in my ear. Crouching, so that I’m face-to-face with her, she tells me not to be nervous, to take a deep breath and be proud of my ‘weird cake’ because I did my very best and that’s all her and Daddy ever ask of me.

In that moment, I would willing have given my daughter the horse she repeatedly asks for, because in that moment she told me exactly what I needed to hear.

And, in case you're wondering, my 'weird cake' tasted like cheap soap.

High-five!