She doesn’t like cake, she says. She’s never liked it. And she’s tried. She’s done trying. She won’t pretend to like a thing just to make an arrangement of grownups happy. She’s not interested in making life easier on anyone. “Just a small piece?” a grandparent implores, holding a small sagging paper plate out to her. No. She turns her head away from them. The problem is mainly, although not entirely, in the frosting. It goes straight to the back of the throat, and it tingles there radioactively. It’s the food coloring or the sugar. It feels like a tiny, furry spider, crawling toward her tonsils.

So, I hunt for an alternative that will satisfy the girl when it’s time to celebrate her birthday. “I don’t like cake,” she informs the teen boy handing out wristbands at the climbing gym where she is having her 6th birthday party. He shrugs. Instead, I’ve made a three-tier Rice Krispie tower in the shape of a cake and written Happy Birthday on it in red icing. On the top, I’ve nestled a tiny Little Mermaid doll in a cloud of whipped cream. The girl’s bangs are cut bluntly just above her eyebrows. She doesn’t even look at me when I give her the whole top tier of the tower, she just lifts it, in her two tiny hands, above her head like a trophy.

For her 9th birthday, I attempt an ice cream sundae bar. There are three different ice creams, a chocolate and a caramel sauce, an array of candy toppings, whipped cream, and maraschino cherries. There is also a piñata. She has a few bites of the ice cream. She sucks on a gummy worm. The piñata is a disaster—another kid whacks it, and the candy falls into the dirt in the back of the yard under the dying Ceanothus tree. She wanted to be the one to break it open on her birthday and is on the verge of tears. She cannot be anyone other than who she is. I can’t expect her to take it easy, she takes nothing easily. Everything has meaning to her. Nothing is nothing. She cares about everything. She does not like cake (or cupcakes for that matter, you can’t fool her) or birthday parties, or Harry Potter. Add piñatas to the list.

For her 10th birthday, at 9am, I race across town and buy 35 macarons from a tiny bakery in a strip mall in Burbank. I arrange the macarons in a tower by color to approximate a rainbow. The most beautiful macaron is sparkling rosé flavored—it’s a light pink, the exact color of her cheeks when she picks a fight with me, and has a delicate brush stroke of gold across the front. It is a small party, just her cousins, grandparents, and siblings. I call them all in from the pool. “It’s time for birthday not-cake!” I yell.

“I don’t like cake,” she explains to her cousin as they climb out of the shallow end. He nods.

When she sees the macarons, she looks over the heads of all the people there to celebrate her, she finds me, folds her hands over her heart, and she screams.