Birthdays, Turkeys and Thanks for Giving

Birthdays, Turkeys and Thanks for Giving

          I love the holidays, the celebrations, and the wonders that seem to be part of that time of the year.  As my husband’s birthday approaches (my younger than me husband), I love listening to the story of his birth at Thanksgiving, his mom in the hospital being asked by the doctor if she wanted to be home for the Thanksgiving holiday with the rest of her family, three children and a husband, her reply to the doctor, No.  I am sure that she was thinking of the joyous holiday with all of the food that Thanksgiving entails as well as the work involved in cooking, serving and cleaning up with three small children and a husband who was fairly helpless in the kitchen except for the carving of the perfectly baked bird, the great symbol of family, togetherness and thankfulness. It was easier to stay in the hospital with her new baby while her husband took everyone out for dinner. 

I will admit that I have lost my burning desire of preparing for the spread of a bountiful feast upon my table with family gathered all around. It stems from the lost of my husband’s father and our son who no longer comes home for this holiday as he is so far away and the added expense of traveling home for him.

However, I do gaze over the magazines with their tips for cooking the perfect bird.  Over the years, I have gained many tips which have proven quite useful in making the bird moist, the drippings flavorful, which in turn has helped the gravy to be quite tasty when it is resting on the mashed potatoes that my husband’s mother has prepared.

          Ah, for those days of plenty on the table.  Now, I don’t even bake a cake for my husband’s birthday.  It is per his request or maybe it is the memory of the one that I made so many years ago that keeps him from asking.  Our son was about three years old when I made the cake.  I had worked very carefully looking for just the right recipe, the prefect ingredients, borrowing the cake pans from my sweetheart’s mother.  I measured, sifted, stirred and mixed, pouring everything into the greased and floured round cake pans and wait for the minutes to tick away. I was confident as I was a baker of fine breads, cookies, etc. How hard could a layer cake be?

          I rehearsed my son in saying “Happy Birthday, Dad” while we waited for the chocolate cake to come out of the oven.  The frosting was waiting in the refrigerator.  All was well.  Well, almost perfect.  The chocolate cake rose in the pans and looked lovely when I took it out of the oven. After removing the cake from the pans and letting the two layers cool on the racks, I carefully placed one layer on a large pink plate and sliced the round top off and sampled the moist, tender chocolate cake.  It was yummy.  Success was just a couple of minutes away.

          Our son sat in his highchair so he could be part of the miracle of making a birthday cake for his daddy.  One layer on the plate, frosting was out of the refrigerator and with my spatula in hand I began to frost the first layer. I took the second cool layer and placed it on the bottom layer.  I turned to pick up the bowl with the frosting then moved back around to the cake and froze in place.

          My second layer had broken in two as it sat on the other layer.  “Oh, no,” I told my son. What was I to do?  I could not put toothpicks in the cake to hold it in place. It would never do for someone to bite into a wooden toothpick, ouch.  I used my hands to try and move the cake layer back into place and decrease the ever widening gap.  Nope, it was not working.  Okay, it was too late to bake another cake as I had to drop our son off at his grandmother’s with the cake until his dad came home.  So how much frosting does it take to fill in the Grand Canyon?  Apparently on a cake that is moving away from itself quite a bit.

          I decided to have our son practice saying something new. “It is a sad looking cake but it is the thought that counts.”

          The cake was taken to Grandma’s to wait for his dad to stop by to pick up our son.  Because I was working that day, my husband was to have dinner at his mom’s with my contribution being the cake. Our son did manage to tell his dad about the cake but as always with children it will come out differently, “Are you going to eat the sad looking cake”, our nearly three year old asked his father.  

          Now twenty-seven years later on this Thanksgiving Day, I am thankful for many things.  My life has had its ups and downs, primarily with the passing of loved ones, both the two legged and foot legged kind but isn’t that a part of the passing of our days. There is a comfort in believing that all is well with the cycle of the world. 

 As I work on this piece, there is a siren howling with the wind outside our house and as always I try and take a moment to pray for the safety of all those concerned.  May all find peace on this day of giving thanks for all that we have and let us hold peace for those who have no shelter, food or family in the storm of the world, give thanks for giving.

For myself, I am even thankful for cakes that did not quite turn out as it truly is the thought that counts.  That seems to go for everything that we do in our daily lives if we allow ourselves to breath.  I will have to remember that.