family

Post #84: Evanescence

Cindy Frank family, holiday preparation, memory, middle-age, musings, personal philosophy, Uncategorized , ,

IMG_7354It happens when I least expect it. Thoughts of you drift through my mind like the atomized wafts of exquisite scent sprayed and spritzed with abandon through the aisles of Saks Fifth Avenue. Oh the perfume lingers!

Once I knew precisely how many days in a row you’d wear that striped shirt.

That no matter how many strawberries I bought it would never be enough.

That there is no joy as complete as four days off from school with new video games and hanging on to power in a power outage.

That there is no rushing when one is lucky enough to spot a sand wasp.

That pizza is meant to be Pepe’s and carved into strips not slices.

That Red Notebooks are for poetry and just the beginning.

That the joy of the Bach Double redoubled when you played half of it.

That jokes can zing and ping around the room like popcorn from an unending popper.

That breakfast in bed is not just for special occasions.

That bow ties are cool, especially when you wear them.

That we are ever and always outnumbered by cats.

That for you a book in hand is a book in heart.

That Thanksgiving is the perfect holiday, turkeyless and inviolate.

That three is the perfect number except when we are five.

Time, I think, is not torn asunder so much as it is the soft ripping of well worn, well loved flannel. They are missed. They are remembered. They are celebrated. They are so very loved.

They are coming home soon. Diving deep into memory to make memories anew!

 

Post #68: “These Are Not Just Any Floors.”

Cindy Frank memory, middle-age, musings, personal philosophy, Uncategorized , , ,

IMG_0660Oh how typical of me!  I was besotted with this place, before I’d ever actually seen it, before I’d ever even been there.  I hungered for it and yearned for it.  As solid and sweet as a bar of chocolate, as warm and as inviting as hug from your beloved, an unending waterfall of information tumbling right into my arms.  I knew I’d be safe there. I loved it, loved it loved it from the start.  A helter-skelter sprawling tumble of a place.

The American Museum of Natural History on Central Park West, New York City. My heart’s home.

***

Greenhorn

I am a ravenous  bottom feeder, deep in the subterranean bowels of this marvelous place! Scurrying  past the gigantic slice of Sequoia though the Halls of New York Forests, twirling around  the massive mosquito, ogling the poor dead Dodo,  I am the Goddess of the Information Desk. Even though I am so new to New York that there is a foldable map permanently crushed into the bottom of my purse, I spray fans of guide books and point my fingers with impunity, as I now know the exact route to the Whale,  to the dinosaurs  to the canoe!

Every Saturday I spend hours traveling up to the museum by subway from Brooklyn. I could be anywhere but I am here, just to be here.  Where else?

***

The Spring  Thaw

“I buy chickens bigger than that.”  They were so tiny, the identically burbling, undersized indoor captives of the wildest white winter in memory.  At four months we could count on one hand how many times they had been outside.  But now it was March and the massive ice cliffs that reached the tops of the street signs on the corners were melting into rivers that ran down the avenues.  Stuffing them into their oversized snowsuits, side by side in their stroller, we defiantly pushed through the revolving doors and out to the street.  Two blocks over, seven blocks up. The Museum.

I had been waiting for this!

We rolled past the trumpeting elephants in the Akeley galleries, dragged through the Serengeti Plain, huddled with the Muskox.  And last and best of all to Hall of Ocean Life to stand under the belly of the whale!  I was agog. They were asleep.

Snug in their snowsuits, in the dim light of the museum they slept deeply and contentedly, on and on.   Could they absorb the aura of my best loved place with their every sleeping breath?  Just to be sure, I bought them their own tiny dinosaurs.  Ah. And Ah.

***

Herding

And now there are three.  Belted into the back,  the curly-haired one car seated in the middle, we are ready for adventure!  Charizard, Pikachu, and Blastois  clutched in their fists, DK Eyewitness Oceans on the folded down screen, dreams of Dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets tantalizing their tongues, we know where we want to go.

Once there we bounce from Birds of the World, to Primates, to the long awaited Margaret Mead Hall of Pacific People.  The Giant Turtle, the Corythesaurus, the Passenger Pigeons!

And always we end at Rocks and Minerals, rolling, rollicking and running  up and down the ramps our paths sparkling with rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and the Star of India itself.  All  glinting, and glowing, and glimmering.  For us.

Bang out a tight fisted drum roll of joy on the petrified wood!  This place belongs to all.

Go you Game Boys!

***

So Close to Travel So Far

To the loll on the beaches of the Bahamas?  Or ski the slopes of the Smug?  Perhaps for some but not for us.  Why fly?  Instead we travel the world simply by hugging the edge of Manhattan as we fling ourselves into the flow of the Westside Highway. You know our destination.   From the Hall of Planet Earth to The Hall of Biodiversity we are here and we are there.  Through this place, we are everywhere.

***

Science Rules

Heretofore off-limits, the gateways of science open to them with a warm welcome to the mysterious 5th floor and beyond.   Presentations and publications, research and REU.  Walk longest hallway in the world with no end in sight.  They are back again. And as with me, part of them will never leave.

Oh, I could make my way through this place blindfolded! But why on earth would I ever do that?  As Roy Chapman Andrews once said, “these are not just any floors.”

As always, thank you, for having me. Thank you for having all of us.  As ever and as always, I will be back.

Post #64: From the Tips of My Fingers

Cindy Frank family, middle-age, musings, personal philosophy, reinvention , ,

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The universe spun from the tips of my fingers. It loomed large in a tiny room at the museum.  All it took was a few cranks to set it in motion!  The solar system itself would start to whirl and swirl  and spin as all the planets would begin their personal pirouettes from speedy Mercury to sluggish Saturn.  All around the sun, calm and gracious, but always and ever unmoving.

I’ve been home for a long time. I wanted to be here. I was lucky to be here.  A loved and lovely slightly tumbled down house.  Lived in and deeply beloved.   Miraculously held together with duct tape and spit, scrambled full of everything from pop-up books to Pokemon cards. A warm cooky smell  always clinging to the air.  If you listened carefully you’d hear an entrancing cascade of crazy rhythms,  the gentle strumming of a mandolin or perhaps the low down sound of the blues.  Enter through the red door to find us all.  You’d know just where to find me.  I’d be at the center of everything, stirring at the stove.

But the planets keep moving, as just they should.  So exquisitely beautiful to watch them all spinning!  But just to watch?

What’s out there to find? What’s out there to see? What’s out there to do?

Open the door, down the steps, around the path. You have to look up. Of course  I look up.  There it  is!   The warm  embrace of the sky. Oh! It’s as if time stretches and pulls itself open before me.

Will it destroy the laws of physics if my heart and mind remain at the center of my private little universe yet still soar on their own?

Perhaps in this case, the sun does in fact move.

For the first time, in a long time I wake up in the light.  And my head, my head is suffused with dreams!

Post #63: Yahrzeit

Cindy Frank death, memory, middle-age, musings, personal philosophy, Positive change , , , ,

img_9912She was oh so very very difficult. Did she like me, care for me, consider me?  I was never quite sure. She held me at distance, kept me off balance.  Her temper  was a landmine waiting to be be tripped. I had learned to be careful.  I knew to be careful. Time after time I ground my teeth together not to bite the bait. It was complicated and I knew it. After all, we both loved the same man.  Her son. My husband.

We lost her a year ago. 

In spite of all antagonisms and all misunderstandings, or perhaps because of them, I asked to write her eulogy.  This is what I said on a frozen January day, 2016.

She was a woman who dressed to go grocery shopping, who dressed to go to the movies, who dressed to go for a walk in the park.

A bag to match each pair of shoes.  Everything just so.

Broadway matinees on Wednesday at 2.  A ruffled scoop of black raspberry at the Howard Johnson’s counter. The uptown subway home.

Always two slices of cake for Dad for his morning coffee break, veal cutlets or potted  chicken for dinner, hamburgers  fresh cooked for her hungry son at midnight.

Not a hair out of place nor an drawer. overstuffed. And yet,

To feed hungry and homeless cats, She could arc a meatball from her balcony to the parking lot with a curve that would have made Sandy Koufax proud.

Photographs of her grandsons were framed in gilt.

Joel listened when she insisted.  Had he not, we never would have met.

“So what are you waiting for, “ she demanded.  “ask her to marry you. “

To be honest. To be fair therefore, I owe her my life, our happiness. Our boys.

To my mother-in-law, a woman to be reckoned with, my eternal thanks, deep appreciation and love.

Eulogy for Lillian Schwartz Frank, z”l.

I wasn’t expecting what happened next.

Last weekend. A new  house, an old suitcase.  Flipping the latches I found a box of photos.

Was it really her? I squinted just to be sure. Oh my goodness.  It was.

The photograph had been taken in the 1950s.  She is sitting on a park bench.  It’s a lovely shot. But it’s her face that stunned me, her smile that cut me to the quick.  There is a sweetness, an openness, a generosity  and simple beauty in that face that I never saw, that I’d yearned to see when I knew her.

Had I truly missed the signals of who she was completely?   Had I arrogantly and woefully misjudged her?  Or had she changed so by the time I knew her that the woman in photo was stuck in time to be replaced by someone else?  If so, what had happened, what had changed her? 

I found that photo on her yahrzeit , the first anniversary of her passing.  Maybe just coincidence.  Maybe not.  Was she reaching out to us? If so, to say just what?

I don’t know. But I can reach back.  On that day I uttered the words of Kaddish for Lillian Frank, my mother-in-law.  The words of Kaddish, the prayer for the departed, is not what most people expect.  The translation of the prayer, from the Aramaic,  is herewith:

Glorified and sanctified be God’s great name throughout the world

which He has created according to His will.

May He establish His kingdom in your lifetime and during your days,

and within the life of the entire House of Israel, speedily and soon;

and say, Amen.

May His great name be blessed forever and to all eternity.

Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, extolled and honored,

adored and lauded be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He,

beyond all the blessings and hymns, praises and consolations that

are ever spoken in the world; and say, Amen.

May there be abundant peace from heaven, and life, for us

and for all Israel; and say, Amen.

He who creates peace in His celestial heights,

may He create peace for us and for all Israel;

and say, Amen.

translation from myjewishlearning.com

There are praises to God throughout the Kaddish, and a  fervent prayer for peace.  It is that peace that I wish for my mother-in-law, for myself a renewed call for openness and for understanding.

Post #55: The Sweetness of Nearness

Cindy Frank memory, musings, nature, personal philosophy , , ,

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“The insect does not aim at so much glory. It confines itself to showing us life in the inexhaustible variety of its manifestations; it helps us to decipher in some small measure the obscurest book of all, the book of ourselves.” Jean-Henri Fabre

They are all surrounded by sweetness. Diligent, caring, and oh so industrious. They burrow and they buzz, their soft fuzzy bodies bely their stingers as they nuzzle and cuddle together. Stacked in hexagonal bunk beds that lock together like legos. All equal: they eat, they rest, they live, they love.

Flying far afield they swoop and swerve, pirouetting from flower to flower. Sated, consumed, exhausted. Even so, they know they always have a hive to come home to. Sweetness at its source. It oozes thick and slow, enrobing and ennobling them, caressing them all. So very, very sweet.

Their hearts and souls beat as one.

***

I buzz busily through my day, day after day. I rattle and I roar from place to place, nervously tapping and thumping and bumping and bungling. Sated, consumed, exhausted. But there are always tiny drops of honey. I guzzle them greedily: a nod, a smile a door held open. But eventually I do come home. If I wait, if I am patient, someday soon we all will all alight here, nipping together at the honeycombs, tasting the sweetness of nearness. We are here, whenever we get here, for each other. We always will be.

No matter how far away any of us fly, the hive remains. It always remains. Welcoming to loved ones, again and again. For always.

But I miss you all. I miss you. I do.

I dream. We are all together, enrobed and ennobled in sweetness.

Soon.

Post #55: The Sweetness of Nearness

Cindy Frank family, memory, middle-age, musings, parenting, personal philosophy , , ,

img_9026

“The insect does not aim at so much glory. It confines itself to showing us life in the inexhaustible variety of its manifestations; it helps us to decipher in some small measure the obscurest book of all, the book of ourselves.” Jean-Henri Fabre

They are all surrounded by sweetness. Diligent, caring, and oh so industrious. They burrow and they buzz, their soft fuzzy bodies bely their stingers as they nuzzle and cuddle together. Stacked in hexagonal bunk beds that lock together like legos. All equal: they eat, they rest, they live, they love.

Flying far afield they swoop and swerve, pirouetting from flower to flower. Sated, consumed, exhausted. Even so, they know they always have a hive to come home to. Sweetness at its source. It oozes thick and slow, enrobing and ennobling them, caressing them all. So very, very sweet.

Their hearts and souls beat as one.

***

I buzz busily through my day, day after day. I rattle and I roar from place to place, nervously tapping and thumping and bumping and bungling. Sated, consumed, exhausted. But there are always tiny drops of honey. I guzzle them greedily: a nod, a smile a door held open. But eventually I do come home. If I wait, if I am patient, someday soon we all will all alight here, nipping together at the honeycombs, tasting the sweetness of nearness. We are here, whenever we get here, for each other. We always will be.

No matter how far away any of us fly, the hive remains. It always remains. Welcoming to loved ones, again and again. For always.

But I miss you all. I miss you. I do.

I dream. We are all together, enrobed and ennobled in sweetness.

Soon.

Post #47: The Cartographer of Malleable Memory

Cindy Frank memory, middle-age, musings, personal philosophy, Uncategorized , , ,

IMG_1854I scribbed and scrawed and scratched and scroobed. At first with those thick lavender elementary school trainer pencils, sometimes with a nothing more than a nubble of broken crayon. In flowing royal blue fountain pen ink or a smudgy stub of pencil. I dreamed of typing in a tree house but instead I scribbled in backseats or on busses, while wedged behind a fliptop schoolhouse desk or hunched over a sticky kitchen table.

Like Livingston on a lifelong safari, I am off to capture the prize.

My middle finger is marked by a callous from gripping the pencil so earnestly, even desperately, my hands are forever stained with ink. Scraps of paper, half finished notebooks, missives tucked into books. Tantalizing clues and ciphers and keys! All for me.

The cartographer of malleable memory, I am making a map.

***

BRAVE: Oak Park Boulevard

Ah ha! Nobody is watching. My moment has come. I kick my tennis shoes off into the summer grass and gingerly ease my feet onto the hot sidewalk. I am expecting a sizzle but it doesn’t happen. Step by step by step. I can do it! Like the firewalkers that boldly skitter over hot coals I am brave enough to walk the fiery pavements of Oak Park Boulevard with my bare feet! But even so I make certain to step carefully over every single crack. Because I love my mother very much.

***

AWAY: Hudson’s Department Store

Like a moveable steel Everest it loomed imploringly before me.   Each step rising up and up and up and then somehow folding away into some mysterious and inviting heavenly realm. Where did it go, where did it lead? I had no idea. All it took was just one tiny step and I was on my way, lofted upwards on a moveable stairway to adventure! As my mother turns I wave and then, in an instant, I am out of sight.

***

BEAUTY: The Beauty Parlor near Coolidge

It’s Friday and all the ladies are there ready to be made behived and beautiful. With enough hairspray the hairdo will last for the whole week. Each lady swathed in a plastic apron, they face their mirrors without ever making faces, and they sit in chairs that spin without ever spinning wildly. How do they do it? The air is thick with chatter and cumulous clouds of hairspray. But if we are quiet, there is a quarter for each of us.

In the corner, in the back is the Soda Machine! My sisters and I stand transfixed. Red Pop or Orange or Rock n Rye?

I am the oldest so I already know which is best. Without hesitation I drop in my quarter and twist the dial. In a moment a tall bottle of Faygo Grape is in my hand.

I swig right from the bottle and I think maybe that being made beautiful just might be worth it.

***

VICTORY: Camp Walden, Girls 9

High noon on a sunny day. We are inside, of course. That’s where the real action is. The floors are hard and swept and smooth.   You could bounce a quarter off my hospital-cornered bunk. I know. I tried. I am toe to toe with my halter-topped, feathered-haired adversary. I’ve got this. Then with one practiced hand I knock the jacks into a perfect arc and with the other I flourish the ball in the air. My left hand sweeps through the maze and in a flash it’s all over.   I am the official jacks champion of Girls 9.

***

WELCOME: Kingswood

The Oldsmobile pulls around the circle. I get out and the car pulls away. I am here. Knee socks and loafers, pale blue blouse and a brown jumper with pockets. I desperately need the pockets, where else can I put my nervous hands? I walk up the steps and pull open the doors. I am in the Green Lobby, a simple name for a space so exquisitely beautiful no fancy words could hope to ever do it justice. My heart skips a beat and then it almost explodes from my chest. How can this be?  How can you come home to a place you’ve never been to before? But I have. At that moment I know part of me will never leave. Or perhaps it is that this wonderful place will never really leave me.

***

BELONG: Carnegie Deli, New York City

Sunday morning, 8 AM, Seventh Avenue. The doors of Carnegie Deli are unlocked before my eyes. Where are the crowds? I cannot figure out where everyone is. Don’t all real New Yorkers rush out at pre dawn hours on Sunday mornings?

I sit uncomfortably on a bentwood chairs at one of the long tables and I wrestle with a menu that is as massive as the Ruben’s Triptych.   Pen and pad in hand the bow-tied, black-jacketed waiter is waiting. And waiting.

I panic. So I order the first things that come into my head.

In a few moments he places a warm baked apple and hunk of Russian Coffee Cake in front of me.   I take a few bites and I start to relax at last. It is very good.

When I look up to pay my bill three other people have ordered exactly the same thing.

I have done it. I belong.

***

SEALED: Haagen-Dazs, The Upper West Side

We stood there together, our noses pressed against the glass case. I hardly knew him. So will it be chocolate or mint chip or strawberry or mango? Rum raisin or butterscotch or fudge Ripple or plain vanilla? Cup or a cone? Sprinkles or sauce? Can an ice cream choice define you? Of course it can.

“I’d like an egg cream,” I said. His eyes, behind his round tortoise shell glasses, were wide.   “That’s amazing,” he said. “Me too.”   The kiss, and the life together that follows, is especially sweet.

***

JOY: Riverdale, 16th floor

The identical little people in identical pajamas were so small they couldn’t stand for more than a few seconds without toppling over onto each other. That didn’t matter. They fell down they got up, they fell down they got up again. And they laughed, a rich and rollicking and rolling laugh that blended into a jazz trumpet duet that would have knocked Old Satchmo, Louis Armstrong himself, back on his heels. My oh my!

We never got the joke. Just the joy.

***

MEMORY LANE: Around the corner

He traveled that route like a tiny King in a Yankee cap. Perched proudly in his green wagon he had the presence and bearing of Caesar himself. I pulled the wagon. Down the street, around the corner and a curve through a cave of trees, back and forth day after day to take his brothers to  elementary school. It was my job, but small as he was, he was certain it was his.

Then when he was old enough, for a time he walked with them. And then, older still and the only brother left, he walked Memory Lane alone.

Except for this last time. It was his last day on this beloved path at this beloved school. He asked me to walk with him. No wagon necessary. I did. We walked the path together one more time.

And in front of everyone he held my hand.

***

For me memory isn’t solid at all but truly more like shimmery green jello. I love jello. It shifts in the light. It wobbles. It changes. Memory I think is meant to be stretched, sometimes reshuffled or perhaps rolled like dice from a cup to continuously recreate the treasure map of a happy life. Follow the dots wherever they lead again and again on a zig zagged path to happiness.

.

 

Post #44: For Safekeeping

Cindy Frank memory, middle-age, musings, personal philosophy , , ,

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I should have done it ages ago. But I wouldn’t and I couldn’t. Tattered copies of Richard Scarry’s Busy, Busy World crammed between Mrs. Dalloway and The Aenid. The lumpy lovingly handmade paper mache cat perched next to a Nambe bowl. A bubble wand safely stored with the Wedgewood. The Kindergarten art elementary art show winner displayed with the same pride as the Audubon print. My world is swirled with touch points of memory wherever I look. I’ve kept it all very close.

We tend to think of memory as a snapshot in time, don’t we? We tell ourselves the same soothing, wonderful stories again and again. We need them, we need them so badly as every day we’re carried further and further way from points in time.

With rising panic we keep reaching back and back, our vision blurring into the distance. We could forget! What if we forget? And then what?

*a flattened box of Maizecorn tucked into the bookshelf from the first game at The Big House we attended all together.

*Three individual copies of Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs (one for each), a book read so many times that the two of us were certain the text was stamped into our being for all eternity.

*a very small pair of thick-lensed, gold-rimmed spectacles, for one who was squinty and bookish even in third grade.

*The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, Hot Wheels version.

*A gallon-sized jug of green Tabasco Sauce, long finished.

*a golden bowl, filled to the brim with yellowing paper fortunes.

On a whim, I dig all the way to the bottom. And they are still there.

***

On Sunday night we are all together at a Chinese restaurant like days of old. Plates of steamed dumplings, sizzling platters of exotic vegetables, mound after mound of white rice. Everything but fortune cookies.

When they were very small it was a conceit of mine that whatever they would ask for I would be able to pull magician like from my bag, as If I were always ready to be an audience member for Let’s Make a Deal. Playing cards, tiny cars, bagels, you name it. I was always prepared.

Once more, for the sake of memory. From my bag I brought out their very first fortune cookie fortunes, decades old, carefully marked with their names and the year.

If I think back in time I can no longer remember what they were wearing or what the weather was like or what was on TV the nights they first opened those cookies. But I wonder, what if memory is meant to be malleable, less like a snapshot and more like a Cezanne, the image diffuse and changeable and endlessly lovely?

I can’t remember back clearly so many years. But do know the looks of surprise and love on their faces when they each slipped those old fortunes into their wallets. For safe keeping, of course.

 

 

 

 

“Your One Wild and Precious Life”

Cindy Frank connection, food and cooking, memory, middle-age, musings, personal philosophy , , ,

FullSizeRender (3)It was really no big deal. Except it was. One heavy, sluggish afternoon I was at home. Alone in the empty kitchen. Alone in the house. Alone. Like an aproned conductor poised on the podium I really knew this melody to my very soul, I’ve played it so many times before. I pulled ingredients from the cupboards, pots and pans from the shelves. Oh please! I could do this with my eyes closed. But I didn’t. When I was finished things were different. There was a plate full of cookies. But not the usual blondie squares. Not the standard oatmeal chocolate chip. Not the ubiquitous rice crispie treats.   I had made poppy seed cookies. No one’s favorite. Except mine.

.***

Before I was born my Great-grandmother Rachel Leah made taiglach, hot honeyed pastry mounded into tiny hills, my mother’s memory so powerful that decades later even I could taste the sweetness on my tongue.

***

With the pride and bearing of a queen, my Grandma “Anne with an e” presided over her kingdom. Her edible coffers emptied upon the white tablecloth and spread before us with the glory of a cornucopia, should a cornucopia be filled with platters of sliced meats and bowls of whipped potatoes. At the end we were awarded tins crammed full of Mandelbrot. Chocolate chip for us. Walnut for her boy, my Dad.

***

“It’s nothing,” my little Gram demurred, “it’s not even baking really!” but still she would casually toss ingredients up into to a bowl. Then with the coiled strength of a Billie Jean King backhand she would use her whisk to serve up perfect Lemon Meringue pies. Love all.

***

Every Sunday morning The Egg Master reverently unwrapped his iron skillet. Do you want your eggs scrambled or boiled, stuffed or shirred? Guaranteed delicious, guaranteed perfectly done, guaranteed done exactly the way he wants them for you.

Later he would pile everyone into the car for a long ride for big scoops of ice cream. We could never finish. And no matter the flavor, be it Bubble Gum or Butter Crunch or Blue Moon, The Egg Master would manfully lick down the excess, no complaints.

***

Tureens of soup from my mother, thick with vegetables and anchored with chunks of flanken bobbing like buoys in a thick pea green ocean. Endless bowls from a never-ending tureen of serve yourself. Full of warmth.

***

My husband is stretched like a long pull of salt-water taffy, all six feet of him. When we walk together he holds my hand and I am practically horizontal as I’m pulled along. Like Miss Clavel rushing to Madeleine, I run fast faster fastest to keep up, my legs in a whirl.

But when I walk by myself I can move more slowly, keep my feet right on the ground. Then there is time then to see. Then there is time to think. So I do.

As I walk, Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day” floats into my mind. That last imploring line sticks fast: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

I barely take a breath before I blurt out “anything I want!”

Then I realize that is precisely what I’m doing. That’s just what all the others did. Caring for those they love most. I hope too, like me, they learned to sometimes make their own kind of poppy seed cookies and care for themselves as well. Because the combination, mixed up all  together, is simply sublime.

 

 

POST#41: A SLICE (OR TWO) OF CAKE

Cindy Frank birthdays, middle-age, musings, personal philosophy , , , ,

IMG_1680There they all are, lined up on the banquet table of my life, in the sumptuous buffet of memory. Carefully placed, one after the other, row after delicious row. Cake after cake after cake.

The endearingly homely homemade ones, baked with love, meant to be mashed by jubilant infant fists.

The years of “the best idea ever” Baskin & Robbins ice cream cakes, Mint Chocolate Chip or Jamoca Almond Fudge or Pralines n’ Cream wrapped by a roll of chocolate cake. Sweet gooey slices melting on the plate.

Fancy bakery cakes, festooned with butter cream roses, dotted with sugared violets, scattered with piped green ivy, more longed for, and sometimes more fought for, than the slightly stale layers of the cakes themselves.

A birthday masquerade on the cake stand: cinnamon or chocolate coffee cakes. They perch there uncomfortably and rather ridiculously, porcupined full of candles. Everyone is holding out their plates, dutifully waiting for their slices, silently wishing for chocolate layer or maybe a nice strawberry butter cream instead.

For years a succession of earnest and sprouty carrot cakes were demanded and dutifully served up.   Some were beguiled with their vague notions of healthfulness. Others quietly revolted and later opted for Carvel cones.

Finally, befitting the dignity of the passing years, comes the succession of the stately lemon cocoanuts, ethereal as the clouds themselves, the taste a perfect blend of the sweetness and tang of life itself.

I can see them all, lining the long tables of my memory. All candles blazing, anticipation and hope emitting from each and every cake.

I come from a place where birthday cake is always served for breakfast. That way there is also time for cake for lunch and hopefully, cake for dinner. Candles are spent and then tucked under pillows to make certain wishes will come true. They almost always do.

It’s so simple! Cake is just wonderful. But cake, especially birthday cake, is not just meant to be eaten. It’s meant to be shared. And that’s the plan.

So here is my birthday wish for each of you:

Think of someone you love who’s far away. Think of someone you’ve perhaps loved and lost. Eat cake. But eat that slice of cake in their honor. You can pick their favorite cake or yours. It doesn’t matter. The sweet taste of cake and tang of happy times will linger on your tongue.

A slice of cake to feed the body. A sliver of memory to feed the soul.

Many happy returns to you all!