It is a sunny afternoon and I stand outside my mother’s bakery. This bakery is my second home and I can believe I have to leave. My eighteen year old self is extremely lucky to be able to leave for culinary school. However, culinary school is across the country and my mom will find it hard to say goodbye to her daughter/best employee. She has other employees, but no one knows this bakery better than me. I even invented one of the staple items being sold here. I created it when I was seven years old. It is called the rainbow cupcake.

The rainbow cupcake was invented only three years after the bakery was opened. It was a surprisingly good kitchen experiment that got this bakery on its feet. My mom opened the bakery to try and support me and her dream at the same time. Before this she had worked as a lawyer a very notable law firm since she was twenty-five. When she was thirty-two she had me, and when she was thirty-six she quit law and opened Sunshine Bakery. I was only four years old when my mom inspired me to become who I am today.

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Now picture me, seven years old, brown hair with natural golden highlights, and big green eyes. My mom and I were in the kitchen at the bake shop, and she was teaching me one of the many things she taught me when I was a child; how to make a three-tiered wedding cake. My mom showed me how to put a design on the side but she had to stop and attend to a customer. She left me in the kitchen to my curiosity, when my eyes fell on food colouring supplies my mother owned, but never used. I decided to kill sometime because the customer was looking at wedding cakes and I knew it would take a long time. I began to make a basic red velvet batter. After than I made chocolate orange batter, lemon-butter batter, green apple chunk batter, blueberry batter, and finally plum-vanilla batter. Each batter flavouring corresponded with a colour and when I was done it was a rainbow.

I put all the batters I had made in a cupcake tray and mixed them together. Most of the time my kitchen experiments turned out badly so my hopes were not too high. With all six of the batters in the tray, it almost overflowed. After cleaning a few spills here and there, I heated the oven to three hundred fifty degrees. After waiting five minutes for the oven to reach it’s set heat, the oven beeped and I put the cupcake tray in. I set my mom’s funky chicken timer to twelve minutes. Anxious to see how my creation would turn out, I sat next to the oven and rested my head in my hand. My mom finished with her customer and came back. She gave that look all moms give you, with a tilted head and questioning eyes that said, “what now.”  She looked at the chicken timer and almost as if she had commanded it to, the timer went off. I rose from my seat and grabbed the ragged oven mitts. I dragged the heavy oven door open and the heat blasted into my face. Carefully, I set the hot tray on the stove and I waved my hand over top of the cupcakes as if expecting them to cool off right away.

The cupcakes smelled surprisingly good for one of my experiments. As I waited for them to cool off, I made some buttercream icing flavoured like passion fruit. When the cupcakes were cool enough, I began to ice them. Making a challenge for myself was always the goal so I tried and succeeded to make tallest peak with my icing. Even my mom was proud of the height I had just made with this buttercream frosting. She looked at me as I held one of my proud creations.

.    .    .

I snap back into the present and realize I have been daydreaming for quite a while. I look at the sign that says sunshine bakery and walk up to the door with a smiley face sun on it.  I open the door, walk inside, immediately smelling the same scent that I smelled when I pulled the tray out of the oven. My mom looks over and smiles at me. She probably stills sees the seven year old experimenter in eighteen year old me especially today, the day I am leaving. Before I can talk to my mom, I wait in line in front of three other people. One of the three bought a lemon loaf and is waiting for the other two, who are lined up ordering rainbow cupcakes. The two of them give my mother their money and they head towards the door. As I walk up to the counter, I hear the door chime. There is one more rainbow cupcake on display, but I can smell more baking in the kitchen. I don’t have to ask for my mom to know what I am going to order. She takes the cupcake out of the display and hands it to me. “On the house,”  she says as her smile gets even brighter. I smile back as if I am saying I love you too.

Knowing that this is the last time I will eat a rainbow cupcake in a very long time, I embrace my first bite. The flavours splash from one to the next. The cupcake gives a different feeling for each taste that your mouth gets. The buttercream, light but not too sweet, softens the bites. Passion fruit compliments the fruity flavours of the cupcake and balances the chocolate and red velvet out. This is my favourite creation. Nothing could beat it.

I finish admiring my rainbow treat. “Thank you mom. I love you so much. I will miss you so, so much,” I say to my mom. “I love you too sweetie. Have an amazing time and never forget the rainbow,” she replies. A cab pulls up in front of the store and my mom hands me a suitcase that I had packed earlier. My mom hugs me so tight that I can barely breathe. She let’s go of her embrace and I walk to the door. I wave at my mom and she waves back. Just before the door closes shut, I hear a nickname that I hadn’t heard in a while, “Goodbye Sunshine!”