Patrice J. Coleman

A Piece of Cake

My mother threw a party for me and my friends on my golden birthday. Annie gave me a beautiful set of frilly white underpants. Stevie, the only boy in attendance, guffawed with abandon. My face stung with embarrassment. 

I was seven years old.

My mother’s masterpiece train cake rescued the day.

She baked the white cake in tiny loaf pans, using a small orange juice container to form the shape of a tanker car. Chocolate chips crowded the top of the coal car. Pieces of licorice connected the cars together, with peppermint disks for wheels. 

It was something special, all the more so because my father was the local depot agent for the railroad.  

Additional adventures in cake marked festive occasions--a teddy bear cake, a gingerbread house with a roof made of Necco wafers, and variations on mother's signature doll cake:  a frosting adorned plastic doll surrounded by the full skirt of a decorated angel food cake.

Somewhere along the line I was inadvertently inoculated for cake. I didn't care that there were frosted roses in the freezer, and even when  annual church dinners offered a vast array of cakes beyond my mother’s preference for white or yellow, I was only mildly interested. This may have prevented me from making the narrow leap from chubby to obese.

I’ve got a big birthday coming up. Friends keep asking me how I’m going to celebrate, but I can’t seem to decide on a specific plan. My husband is still recovering from an accident and resulting knee surgery, so I think we can rule out any major travel. I can't even commit to a heavily discounted off-season stay at a local resort.

I’m dreading this birthday, not so much because of the number (which comes with a certain element of shock attached), but for the first time in my life, my mother won’t be a part of my birthday.

Since her death earlier this year, everything has been tinged with grief. The rational part of my mind knows she enjoyed a long, full life. I am grateful for the time we had together, but she was my mother and my friend, and I miss her. My world has been irrevocably altered.

My husband seems to be shouldering the heavy burden of trying to make my birthday “happy” this year. I don’t expect it to be happy, I just want to get through it.

There are bound to be good moments on this birthday. My husband informed me he’d need a dozen eggs the next time I went to the store. I think I can safely rule out any threat of being egged. My next best guess is that he is going to bake me a cake. It won’t be a train cake or a doll cake, but someone I love, loves me enough to bake me something special for my birthday, and that gift will be golden.