Relative Something

The following is a little something I composed for my niece and her fiancé shortly before their wedding day…

For Liz and Nick, March 2006.

At first it started as just subtle cake baking smells. There wasn’t really anything out of the ordinary to see in the normal goings on in our kitchen. The smell from the oven was just really enjoyable. Wait–no, that’s not quite accurate. In reality, it started back before the first of the year. We were invited to a New Year’s Eve dinner party and instructed to contribute a dessert.

Cyndie not only baked up one, she did several. The seven couples were presented with a dessert plate loaded with more choices than the main meal. She said she was ‘testing’ some ideas for a wedding cake. Whether they could eat it all or not was not the point. They needed to provide honest feedback as to which they would want for a wedding cake.  That was the beginning of the great cake-baking training regimen of 2006.

It’s a miracle there haven’t been any hyperglycemic emergencies in the household since.  Well, we have had some help. We sent a cake to Cyndie’s workplace. I took a cake to my workplace. That saved me big time. By late afternoon that day, I was ready to give in and snitch a piece to ward off the day’s doldrums, but by the time I got there, there was no cake left! Thank goodness.

I have sampled frostings till I can’t discern a difference. I have used the bathroom sink when I couldn’t find one in the kitchen under all the baking pans, bowls, measuring cups, spoons and display trays.

Throughout it all, one fact stands out the most. There is this magical abundance of joy and love floating about our home. It is permeating the kitchen. I think even the pizzas coming out of the oven have tasted sweeter.

It seems brighter here, too. When Cyndie is working, there seems to be this angelic glow around her. For all the projects she buries herself in, I cannot recall one that has made her appear nearly as satisfied.

For as long as I have known her, I have been trying to convince Cyndie that you cannot have your cake and eat it, too. That is going to have to change now. For the last few months of my life I’ve been able to do just that!