Topic 204: On Arising to the Occasion

Carol:

Let Them Eat Cake

One of Megan’s grade school science projects was a baking experiment. She made a series of  cakes from scratch, leaving a different ingredient out each time, took photos of the various cakes and, showed show the chemistry behind the cakes. Baking powder, of course, was the key ingredient in the rising process, but we also had to factor in the variable of altitude. At our altitude (5000 feet), changes in both the amount of ingredients and the oven temperature are required.
 

I have sometimes felt a certain obligation to make my own cakes for special occasions. After all, isn’t that what mothers do? And, I would often foist upon myself the added pressure of creating a theme to match the event. My first baking effort was a great success. I made a Valentine’s Day cake following a recipe in my Betty Crocker children’s cookbook. It showed how to bake a square cake and a round cake, then cut the round cake in half and attach with icing to two sides of the square, making a perfect heart. Of course, the cake was a big success because I was 10 and my parents gushed over my creativity and hard work. Fifth grade was a good year for me. I was the best artist in my class, and I baked. Unfortunately, I peaked that year. My drawings never got any better, and my cakes still look like they were made by a ten year-old.
 

There were some exceptions. I made a circus cake one year with a little carousel and decorated animal crackers. The birthday girl and her playmates appreciated it, and it must have tasted pretty good because they dug in with four-year old enthusiasm. My best effort was the spaceship cake for Marshall’s 4th birthday. His friend Francis had a birthday the same week, so we had a little party with just the two families. Francis’ mom and I covered their little bicycle helmets with tin foil, and each wing of the spaceship cake had a boy’s name on it. It was a big success. Now that I think about it, I didn’t bake that cake. Francis’ mother did. Darn.

 

 

Somewhere along the way,I found out about The Cake Lady. She lived up the road and we used to see her almost everyday hiking the hill behind our house.    She had a reputation all over Prescott for her beautiful, delicious recipes, so much better than store-bought, infinitely better than my homemade efforts.  And she had an artist’s talent for decorating. The Cake Lady’s cakes commemorated Megan’s high school graduation, Marc’s sixtieth birthday, and my mother’s 85th birthday, all of them decorating with little personal touches for the occasion. My mother’s cake was the most beautiful I had ever seen,  with little musical notes to mark her many years of singing in the Methodist choir and cascades of delicate flowers and butterflies around the edges. 
 

Eventually, the Cake Lady retired from baking (boo hoo).  A few years ago she slowed down her exercise routine, not because she couldn’t keep up that energetic pace but because her dog couldn’t.  Now, she is part of our early morning “walk and talk” group. Today is her birthday, so she didn’t have much time to stay and chat because all her family is arriving to celebrate #75. Arisin’ to the occasion, her loving husband put her under strict orders. No baking.  Happy birthday, Cake Lady. 

Megan:

During my freshman year in college, I joined the crew team. We practiced five days a week starting at 4 AM.  We had to get up that early because it was a half hour’s drive to the reservoir where we rowed, and then we had to get the boats in the water. The sun would come up over the Oakland hills, and I’m sure from above we looked just like the teams you see in movies about Ivy League schools – our boats gliding over a perfectly smooth surface like a water bug. 

Down in the boat, it was a different story. We were usually cold and wet, our inexpert rowing often splashing each other. Occasionally, someone would “catch a crab” which meant the oar jammed in the water, driving the handle end into a stomach. We were warned that at high speed, catching a crab could launch someone right out of a boat, but at the worst, it just knocked the wind out of us.  Every now and then we would find our rhythm, row in sync and fly across the water, and it was beautiful, just like in the movies.

Not all the practices included rowing on the water. We spent a lot of time in the gym, and outside running. One time we ran a series of staircases by Lake Merritt in downtown Oakland. We ran them for an hour straight, and towards the end I paused and told the coach I needed a break. She yelled at me to keep going, and at the top of the stairs on the final lap, I threw up all over a perfectly landscaped flower bed. The coach applauded my dedication, using me as an example for the team, but I planned her murder on the ride back to campus.

Eventually the early hours got to me.  Four AM is not much earlier than I wake up now, but back then, I wasn’t getting up for practice, I was staying up. I worked the last shift in the library, and then when I got back to the dorm, I wanted to hang out with my friends. In college, I found that most of the fun stuff was happening between midnight and 3 AM, and I didn’t want to miss anything. For the most part, my classes were all in the afternoon and evening, so I went to bed after practice and slept most of the day.  

I wasn’t the only one who lived this way and it drove the coach crazy. She hated that the team was full of drinkers, smokers and up-all-night partiers and criticized our lack of commitment to the team. Rightly so. Eventually this led to a mass exodus and more than half the team quit, including me. I used the excuse that it wasn’t fun anymore, which, in my late teens, was my go-to reason for quitting anything. I didn’t understand back then that there’s a real sense of accomplishment in seeing something through, especially when it’s hard.  I wish I hadn’t quit, but for the most part, I’ve seen everything through since then. Except for Pilates.