Dad and I arrived back home in Albion very late one evening – we had
been out visiting hospitalized church members all the way over in
Rochester. It was Dad’s birthday, October 13, and we had been gone all
day – we had pretty much forgotten about celebrating.
We entered through the back door into an almost completely dark house
(most unusual since my mother usually kept every light on in the place
when she was alone). Mom was nowhere to be found but there, in the
corner of the kitchen, on top of the chest freezer and illuminated by
one gooseneck desk lamp, was a cake.
This was not just any cake. This cake had a rusty orange zinnia with a
broken stem drooping off to one side of it. A large white candle kind of
angled out of the cake like a cannon. The chocolate frosting was flecked
with cake crumbs; the frosting was all over the cake plate.
There were little birthday candles stuck here and there into the cake’s
frosting and we also found several egg shells and a couple of spoons wedged into
this amazing creation. A few pieces of the cardboard cake mix box were
also sticking out of the frosting.
Mom soon emerged from the darkened dining room and related the story of
this cake. As usual, it was a layer cake that she had tried to bake.
And as usual she had encountered problems removing the layers from the
pans. When she had finally succeeded in prying the chunks of cake out
of the pans, they really weren’t in “layers” anymore so she tried to
“glue” everything back together with frosting. A few toothpicks inside
to hold everything in place – voila!
Mom always had trouble with layer cakes because the layers never came
out of the oven flat or even – they always dipped in one direction or
the other – that is why she had to use toothpicks to hold the layers
together. It was many, many years later that I discovered that ovens
came with leveling feet – and that my poor mother’s years of problems
over unlevel cake layers was not her fault but the fault of unleveled
parsonage ovens.
But on this day in October this particular birthday cake was not
cooperating with her and soon crumbs were in the frosting and frosting
was everywhere. First she got mad - then she got creative. And because
enough time had elapsed between when she made the cake and when dad and
I came home, we all had a good laugh over the cake and cut it up and
ate it. We just had to be really careful and watch out for those
toothpicks.