SNAP and the Birthday Cake
SNAP and the Birthday Cake
My daughter was about to turn six. It had been a really tight year. Almost every dollar I made went to rent and bills. The food on our table? That came from the SNAP benefits that hit my EBT card each month.
I’d been promising her for a long time that on her birthday, I’d get her that princess cake she loved—the one with the pink frosting and rainbow sprinkles. We’d seen it at the grocery store a few times, and she’d always press her face against the glass display, refusing to leave.
On her birthday, I took her to the store. I let her pick it out herself. She chose the smallest one, but her eyes were lit up. I carefully placed the cake in our cart, along with some milk and eggs.
At the checkout, I pulled out my EBT card, just like always. The cashier scanned the milk and eggs, then picked up the cake. She turned it over, then looked at me with an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry," she said, "but you can't pay for this with SNAP."
I was stunned. "Why not? It's food."
"It's a prepared item from the bakery," she explained. "The rules say items with low nutritional value, like decorated cakes, aren't eligible. But you can use the card to buy flour, sugar, and eggs to make one yourself."
My face burned. There were people in line behind me, and my daughter was looking up at me, her eyes full of hope. Make one myself? My oven broke last month, and it costs over a hundred dollars to fix—money I just don't have. And even if I had an oven, could these hands of mine ever make a princess cake that beautiful?
I couldn't explain "prepared items" and "nutritional value" to a six-year-old. All I could do was crouch down and say, in the softest voice I could manage, "Honey, how about... how about we get something else? We can get some cookies."
The light in her eyes just went out. She didn't cry, but she went silent.
I took the beautiful princess cake out of the cart and handed it back to the cashier. On the walk home, my daughter didn't say a word.
I know SNAP is meant to keep us fed, to provide nutrition. But on that day, I really wanted to ask the people who made the rules: isn't a child's happiness on her birthday a kind of nutrition, too? Why do these rules make the simplest celebration for a normal family so incredibly difficult?
#SNAPVoices #SNAPLife
