The pandemic has given me extra time with my teenage sons

It's been a tough time to be 17 or 18, but there have been some upsides, too

My sons are 18 and 17. It was the younger's birthday this week and I made an awful cake that definitely breached my minimum cake standards (I hesitate to criticise Nigella, but there is such a thing as too much peanut butter). He looked a bit overwhelmed when we sang happy birthday, and I worried all day about him and his 17-year-old pandemic life, without access to the places and people that help being 17 make sense. There is nothing I can do about that, so I am fixating on the cake, sitting here wondering if I have time to make a replacement. I don't, but I might anyway. What else do I have to offer him - another load of laundry?

Because neither of my kids actually needs me now. They could live independently without dying of hunger or septic shock (the elder managed five weeks last summer) and after an emergency remedial tutorial on what can't go in a microwave" at Christmas, probably without fire or explosion either. They can clean a loo, iron trousers and brave an HMRC helpline; they can make absorption-method rice, a from-scratch pasta sauce and decent chocolate chip cookies. After six months of Covid testing, one has more savings than I do; the other is cagier, but after a decade of not spending his birthday and Christmas money, I suspect he does, too.