Darlings, the Fab is posting an Easter story of Mary's. Honestly, the Fab can't add a single word, all she can do is laugh.
The Easter Cake (A More Or Less True Story)
In the universe of stickum, the adhesive potential of flour, eggs, butter and cocoa has been woefully overlooked, I believe. A family story.
I was too young to remember when the stickum originally stuck, my two older sisters were there and claim to remember. The story started as theirs but, it has been told and laughed over so many times that it doesn't matter if the details are exactly right. The remembering and laughing is the point.
My mother somehow acquired an aluminum cake mold in the shape of a lamb. Once an unusual piece of bakeware arrives in a home an obligation to use it develops. It is some sort of domestic mojo. I was once burdened with a simple circular Jell-O mold. It was not long before I felt compelled to start combining ingredients, colors and garnish in an extravaganza of chilled rococo creativity. I knew that it was time to throw the thing out or enter a 12 step program when I attempted to faithfully recreate a DeLarobia Fruit Wreath using marzipan and lime Jell-O.
Anyway.
Despite four young children to watch over, my Mother managed to mix, bake and unmold the two halves of the cake (front and back, in the event that you have never seen this particular mold). Standing the two halves together and securing them with frosting proved to be my mother's undoing. The two halves sagged, they fell over, the lamb's head came loose and a reattach was attempted (the story goes) so instead of a spring lamb resting in the grass after a frolic, the cake resembled a lamb lying on the slaughterhouse floor.
Doesn't that look awful" said sister number one. Sister number one was no more than five years old at the time and had learned that phrase from my mother so she was not to blame for the results of the use of one of my Mother's pet phrases at a truly inopportune time. As my mother gazed upon the lamb carcass cake the inescapable truth of those words must have struck like a spring thunderstorm.
Agreeing with sister number one, my mother repeated "doesn't that look awful" and suddenly swept the whole mess up into the air and onto the ceiling.
Some of that cake never came back down.
We moved from that house when I was eight. As the last box was loaded into the moving van and the entire family tumbled into the car headed for a new home in a different city, one small piece of that cake remained on the ceiling.
There are things once stuck that can never be unstuck and although left behind are never forgotten.
We moved from that house when I was eight. As the last box was loaded into the moving van and the entire family tumbled into the car headed for a new home in a different city, one small piece of that cake remained on the ceiling.
There are things once stuck that can never be unstuck and although left behind are never forgotten.
