The Birthday Cake

$%^&*(expletive, expletive, expletive!!!!)

The cake was on the floor. At least the pan was upright. Some of the cake was on the floor as well. AND the cake had fallen. Five second rule – picked up the pieces off the floor and put them back on top of the fallen cake. Floor wasn’t that dirty anyway, was it? How long has it been since I cleaned the floor? Cannot remember…. What a mess. Now what do I do?

Tomorrow was my birthday. I was responsible for munchies for my Sunday School class and I was making this cake with the intentions of showing up, putting birthday candles on it for me. If I cannot honor me, then no one else can, I thought. Now it was on the floor. It was so pretty in the oven. Jackie Jackson’s Pound Cake recipe out of the Beaver Dam Baptist Church Favorite Recipes Cookbook – the one dedicated to my mother, Lydia Rose. I had used the recipe before, using lemon or almond flavoring instead of the called for vanilla, but this time I used the vanilla. Simple. Complete. Elegant. Old recipe. Hard to mess them up. In the last week when I thought of what kind of birthday cake I wanted, pound cake was the only kind that came to mind.

Rosalyn had come over to have dinner with Peggy and me and they were waiting on the porch for me to take the cake out of the oven. They heard the expletives. “What are you going to do?”, they asked. Let me see, I thought. Well, the bottom of the cake still looks ok, so I know what I will do. I will turn it out upside down, then back right side up, and just cut the top off of. Maybe I can put a sauce or something on top so it won’t look so bad. I only waited a few minutes, and anxious to work on it went back in the kitchen to carry out the plan.

It didn’t come out easily. OMG, I forgot to run the knife around the edges of the pan. Too late – kerplop, the cake came out, leaving a rim of cake still in the pan. Now there was not an attractive piece of the cake anywhere. NOW what do I do? Popping a piece of the wreck in my mouth I though, “Mmmmm, pretty good. Looks awful, but tastes pretty good.

Back out on the porch I described the wreck to Rosalyn and Peggy. “What are you going to do now?” “I could make trifle, I guess.” We completed our dinner, and then I went into the kitchen to create our dessert. Rosalyn brought ice cream, and we had crumbled pieces of cake and ice cream. After the dishes were done and Rosalyn left and Peggy was in bed, I did not feel like doing anything about the cake. This is really going to be a mess to take to my Sunday School class. Then I started thinking about Sunday School. How it is that we judge others on the basis of what we wear, our haircuts, the stuff we say. We view the jobs others have and the prestige they have in the community and view them as good. We view the homeless and the people who don’t smell well and view them as lacking. Maybe this cake was to remind me to look beyond appearances.

Early Sunday morning it came to me. I made up a sign:

To my Sunday School Class:

I made this cake the way it is to remind us to look beyond the physical to the deliciousness within.

Love,

Mary

They LOVED it. There was no hesitation to bask in the flavor of this cake. It wasn’t quite done, either which made it very moist. Then when they realized that it was my birthday someone said, “Mary, we need candles to put on the cake for your birthday.” I replied, “No, I already thought of that – I don’t want my candles on that ugly cake.” Teehee.

(Written on August 23, 2009)