I was trying to find something to make for an Author reading event, that I am part of each third Sunday of the month. I didn't want to go out today because I had some long days with my first-born grandson. I don't have many moments with him, so we stayed up late. I taught him how to play the card game Gin. He didn't want to stop playing until he could beat his Nona. I remember playing cards with my mom and always had the same feeling. The moment brought back a lot of memories that I shared with my mom and I playing cards. We didn't have a lot of fond memories, but cards were one of them.
When I went into my cabinet and saw an angel food cake box, I decided I would make that for the gathering. I only knew how to make it the way my mom did every year for our birthdays; I couldn't believe the only pudding I had in my cabinet was pistachio pudding, the pudding that my mom only used. She would fill the middle with pudding and then mix the rest with the whip cream and frost the cake with it. I remember that is the only cake we would get on our special day. There were no questions asked and no complaining about it. My brothers and sister loved that cake. I didn't mind until the year I would turn sixteen.
I asked my mom if I could have a party and a real birthday cake for my sixteen birthday. I wanted something special, and it wasn't an angel food cake. My mother told me, NO. I was so mad and hurt that she couldn't just do this one thing for me. We never had a good relationship and definitely not one of affection and love. We budded heads all the time and I just never felt heard. Why couldn't she for once give me what I wanted? This brought back the memories of the pair of Jordache jeans I wanted for Christmas one year and instead received a Jordache jumper that I got picked on when I went to school. I felt as a going on sixteen-year-old girl that I could get something I wanted.
That one act put me on a spiral down shift, as I began to plan my escape. I would leave the day after my sixteenth birthday and make my own decisions and never again be somewhere where someone couldn't do something for me. I called my uncle and asked if I could move in with him and my cousin and his quick response was, of course you could. I packed all my stuff in garbage bags and hid them in my closet. I thought nobody would see them and I would leave the moment I turned sixteen. I went on as if nothing was going to happen in school and home. I would tell a few people when we got back to school from Christmas break but, for the most part I kept it to myself. I didn't have many friends anyhow. I wouldn't be missing anything.
My birthday day came, and I was really scared. but was more determined than ever to leave this place and never look back. My uncle would be at my house in the evening. I would pretend I loved celebrating my birthday with no friends and no real cake. I would say thank you for the angel food cake and then get up and get my garbage bags of clothes and walk out that door for the last time. To my surprise my mother walked out of the kitchen with a store-bought cake. The cake was square with purple and white flowers on it and the words "happy birthday" were written on it. I was shocked and once again I heard those words, "no drums Bambi" The words I heard so many years ago with the Jordache pants suit. I didn't know how to feel at that moment and in writing it I still can't figure out my feelings. I heard a horn honk, and I looked at my mom and said, I am leaving, and I walked out and drove off in my uncle's car.
I share the story of what happened to me in my book, The Journey of Josephine. On how my uncle was very sexually abusive to me and I ended up in foster care and he would end up spending ten years in prison and on the sex registry for the many girls he abused, not just me. I never felt I could go back to my mom's after I left because of that old popular saying, "you made your bed you lie in it"
As I made this cake today, all those memories flooded back to me. but, in a different way. Not that of hate and my mom was out to get me every time. but, of a mom that was giving tradition to her children. I know I am guilty over and over again of doing things for my children because I did it every year and I thought they liked it but, to find out they didn't. I frosted that cake today with the memories of my mom. A mom who would think about the dreams and hopes she would have had as the doctors placed me in her arms, the day I was born. I felt the connection of that cake she had each time she made it for each one of her kids, I felt her emotion as she started the process of the cake making because she wanted to feel those moments again with her child. The only way she could was through that angel food cake with pistachio pudding inside. I sat and grieved those moments of What if... today. On that cold January day, I shut the door on that cake and my life was changed forever. Today I made that cake and smiled a little as I saw something different in my mother's eyes.
With the game of Gin that I played with my grandson and the angel food cake I made today, I think I have shed enough emotions for a while. Anyone want cake?
