A cake runs through it
Our granddaughter Lillian just turned 3. Her mother made her a strawberry ice cream cake. Her mother is Katie, our oldest, and Lillian is her daughter.
There may be nothing better than turning 3 and having your mother make you a homemade cake. Store-bought cakes can be good — an angel food cake from Smith’s, the Matterhorn from Sweet Surrender — but there’s something fundamentally better about a homemade cake. Maybe it’s the imperfection, the fact it may not be symmetrical, or the icing is thicker in one part and thinner in another but it doesn’t matter.
Homemade cakes are the best cakes in the world because along with the butter, eggs, flour, salt, sugar and baking soda, they’re made with a whole bunch of you know what. “You know what” can make a cake, especially when your mom makes it for you or perhaps your not-to-be-underestimated dad.
Katie is her own woman in every way possible but also her mother’s daughter in other important ways. Sue always made birthday cakes. This is how generations honor one another and, with a dash of humor, luck and smarter living, how they perfect themselves, too.
Like her mom, Katie is a great cook, cake maker and celebrator of occasions big and small.
Katie (with the help of the birthday girl and the birthday girl’s brother, Andrew) wanted to make a cake like her mother made for her all those years ago when she was 3. A strawberry cake with sweet layers.
Improvement isn’t always easy as Katie discovered.
“With an ice cream cake, you have to do a layer, freeze it for a while, do another layer, repeat. After two hours of this, it was finally done,” Katie said. Done and then undone.
“I put it on a tray to slide it in the freezer and as I went to put it in, I watched in slow motion as it slid off of the tray and onto the floor where it went all over the kitchen rug and the hardwood floors. A big puddle of strawberries, ice cream, graham crackers and whipped cream everywhere.”
The cake maker almost started crying. The birthday girl did. It was a mess and promised to be more of a mess had something not clicked.
“I immediately thought of Mom when she did the exact same thing with my cake when I was younger.”
I remember that cake and that birthday. Katie’s birthday moment. Sue was bringing in the cake. We were singing “Happy Birthday.”
Suddenly the cake slipped off the plate and onto the Holtby Road hardwood floor. Everyone took a deep breath, including the cake baker, and then she began to laugh. She knelt to the floor with the birthday girl and brother Herbie and they started enjoying the cake. Fast-forward 30-plus years. “Andrew and Lillian got down onto the floor and started scooping it into their mouths,” Katie said. “They thought it tasted pretty good, so I started laughing because what else can you do. I made the whole thing again and now the cake is in the freezer, triple-wrapped in Saran Wrap and ready tomorrow for Lillian’s birthday.”
Katie called her mother and they laughed. If history and genetics hold up, wouldn’t we like to be there when Lillian does the same with her daughter.
Even though she’s only 3, Lillian may remember this birthday. Her mother will. If Lillian doesn’t, then her mother will tell her the story and they will remember together.
Homemade cakes are like that. Perfect because love is no matter what the rest of the ingredients are and whether it’s served on the floor or on the table with candles lit, eyes shining and wishes made.
It reminds me of the end of “A River Runs Through It,” but more and more, a lot of things do.
“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.”
Mothers, daughters and grandmothers. Born “from the basement of time.” This river runs forever.