A Cake-Inspired Moment

This week’s my birthday week, and although I’ve passed the age when I’ll divulge which, it’s turning out to be the best one ever. I’m up to one of the scary marker birthdays, which, to my great surprise, is being celebrated twice!

The second party is not until tomorrow, but the first was sprung during our January meeting by the four other women in my book club. That book club is one of the best things that ever happened to me, offering dependable and loyal companionship once a month for sure and often in between. Two of us are breast cancer survivors, and none of us miss a meeting unless were unavoidably out of state.

It was a glorious party, a snowy evening around a cozy fire, with lobster bisque and extravagant presents chosen to make me feel recognized and valued. The cake—sour cream banana—was presented, with lit candles, by our best baker. It blew me away.

I was the cake-maker in my family. Since I was old enough to risk a hot oven, I’ve made birthday cakes for siblings, parents, friends, husbands, children, sweethearts (yes, in that order), and even for myself, but I can’t remember when anyone—at least in my adult life—made a cake for me.

I was reminded of a time many years ago when, in addition to running a county public library system and cooking for a ten-person boarding house, I had my first and only baby. One day a friend came over, took one look at me nursing on the sofa, marched into my kitchen, and brought back a cup of tea. It made me cry. However strong and capable I might have been, I’d exhausted myself. I never forgot that small gesture. A few years later I wrote poem about it:

Small kindness makes me cry.
It comes in through the back door
Into the only room where I can sleep.

I’m blessed with a resiliency I’ve learned to count on. “You always bounce back,” my mother still says, and she is right, but somehow I’d rather be worried about, at least a little. Bouncing is lonely business. Bouncing is a bootstrap operation.

And sometimes, when we’re feeling dribbled by the universe—especially if we’ve just had a baby or endured radiation, rejection, or some secret loss—what strong and independent women need is a piece of cake and a cup of tea that we didn’t make ourselves.


Find out more about Mary Blocksma on her Web site. Read her full breast cancer story, from diagnosis through radiation, on her breast cancer page.