I suppose I'm finally admitting what a petty, small-minded person I can be, even at my age. You’d think by seventy, some of these less admirable traits would have… atrophied. Not so. Yesterday, I entered the annual community bake-off – just a bit of fun, something to fill the endless afternoon hours now that the children are long grown and gone, their own lives so full they barely remember the source of their childhood meals. I baked my lemon poppy seed cake, a recipe perfected over decades of school fundraisers and birthday parties. A good cake. A reliably good cake. And I was genuinely excited to share it, to see the smiles, to maybe even win a ribbon. But then I saw HER table. Her cake – a towering, sculpted marvel, like something from a professional bakery window. Intricate fondant work, edible glitter that shimmered like fairy dust, a perfect cascade of sugar flowers. My lemon poppy seed, for all its deliciousness, looked… homey. Which, I suppose, is what it is. A home cake. A mother’s cake. And suddenly, my own slice, sitting there on the paper plate, a fork at the ready, tasted like ash. I couldn't enjoy a single bite. Not because it wasn't good – it was, it truly was – but because my eyes kept flicking to that other table, to the ooohs and aaahs of the crowd, to the judge who spent an extra minute admiring the delicate petals. It’s absurd, this quiet rage, this feeling of inadequacy over a baked good. But it was there. It IS there. And that’s the real confession, isn’t it? That after all these years of being the rock, the steady hand, the one who put everyone else first, there’s still this raw, unquenchable wanting. This need to be *seen* for something other than the domestic goddess, the provider of comfort. I’ve spent a lifetime serving, making, doing, largely unseen, unheard, unremarked upon beyond the occasional "thank you, dear." And here, in a small town bake-off, with my perfectly good, deeply loved cake, I felt that familiar, bitter sting. We humans, we’re so fragile, so easily undone by the perceived perfection of others. What a peculiar burden it is, this awareness of what *could* have been, what *might* have been, if only we’d dared to reach for something a little… shinier. And yes, I feel this way. Fight me.