Archive for the ‘Creative Writing’ Category
The Wedding Cake Story
I know this girl that professes to dwell in possibilities. Someone in my family asked her to bake a wedding cake. She said, “Yes.” She said yes, even though she had never, ever baked a wedding cake before in her life. She had never talked to anyone who had baked a wedding cake, decorated a wedding cake, or transported a wedding cake. It’s possible that simply saying yes would lead to more stress than she anticipated dwelling in.
It doesn’t really matter that she could have probably purchased a trouble-free wedding cake from a bakery for the amount of money that she spent on ingredients and accessories for this project. Nor does it add much to the point of this story to reveal the number of ‘test’ cakes baked in practice for the final event, or what one does with so many practice cakes once they have been prepared.
This tale begins with a side-story that helps establish a baseline of stress that provides important perspective. Try to imagine that this girl is a career girl. A ‘meetings long into the night’ type of career girl. Let’s just say that this girl works in a capacity of very high responsibility for a public institution that was recently cited for spending beyond their means and placed in very public reprimand by the laws of the state. While managing that crisis for the, pardon my editorial opinion, ‘buffoon’ who is ultimately responsible, she is also actively pursuing alternative top-level employment options.
On the very Friday that she took leave from work to stay home and bake, she got up early to compose a letter to go with her curriculum vitae formatted late the night before, in order to have it finished with little time to spare for a courier to deliver by the deadline for a job she has her sights on. After that, she has nothing to fret over except making her first-ever attempt at a successful wedding cake for a group of about 200 guests of her husband’s niece’s wedding.
Nothing to fret over, that is, until her daughter gets home from college that afternoon with a fever and flu-like symptoms seeking a sick-bed to crash in and hoping for some tender loving care. And her husband gets home from work suffering with prednisone withdrawal symptoms, useless to the world, and collapses in that same bed for the night. So the girl does the best she can with what she’s got and holds together long enough to finish what was planned for the day and make her way to a bed in the spare room for a night’s sleep before the big wedding day.
The next part of this tale requires another side-story. It probably deserves it’s own telling, and it may seem hard to comprehend, but the point here is how it really throws this cake adventure over the top. On Thursday, the girl’s brother sends out a mass-email announcing he is taking his wife out of the country for over a week to celebrate her birthday and leaving their three young children home with his father-in-law. But grandpa is not from this country and his grasp of the English language, based on listening to his efforts, is pretty much represented in single-syllable, one-word sentences. This presents no real problem for the kids, because they speak his native language. However, for the bulk of care-givers generously included in the mailing as enlistees to provide support, it is an additional challenge.
Shortly after midnight, the phone in the girl’s house is ringing. Her number-one son trudges upstairs with the phone to find she is not in her bed, but soon finds her in the next room. Who could be calling at this hour of the night? It is her 7-year-old nephew to report he is throwing up, over and over, and wants more support than Grandpa can provide. The girl is up in a flash and dashing out the door to head over and help nurse what sounds like the saddest of situations. It lasts all night. Vomiting every 45 minutes or so, and then, diarrhea, too. When he finally seems to be able to sleep at around 6 a.m. she finds that his little brother is now awake and wanting attention for the morning. She goes the whole night with little-to-no sleep.
Eventually, necessity drives her back to her own home where she must frost and decorate cake. She tries to shower off all memory and any trace of the sickness from the wee hours just prior and takes on the most important task before her. By the allotted time she is packed and ready to go: cakes, boxes, flowers, decorations, display components, frosting, and tools. The cakes travel just fine. The setup goes well and it is looking beautiful. And then she hears a “snap”.
While the wedding party poses for the last few pictures and the guests are beginning to arrive, the girl turns to see the tiers of wedding cake tipping and crashing before her eyes. Was she dwelling in this possibility? Let’s just say that she isn’t so naive as to have not prepared for the need of ‘backup’ cakes. But what she probably didn’t plan on was the accumulative buildup of these unrelated stresses all precipitating this not so unlikely situation that she now found herself in. I guess that is the point of this whole story. It is at this point that the reader is supposed to try to imagine what it must have felt like to be the girl at that moment the upper layers of cake smashed to pieces on the table and floor.
It’s quite a spectacle. Who knows what life lessons the girl is destined to learn as a result of all this? We could dwell in the possibilities.
The girl reported that the catering staff that had been busy setting tables and preparing the room seemed to suddenly have a pressing need to be someplace else, but not before one paused to exclaim, “You are so fucked,” before leaving the room. Even the girl’s friend, who was along for support that only true close friends can provide, recognized this moment as beyond category and sought extra-ordinary response. She stole behind the bar and poured a shot of whiskey, offering it to the girl, who, without hesitating, despite never having been a whiskey drinker, downed it for whatever possible assistance it might provide.
By the time the wedding ceremony was complete, the backup cakes were in place and the display modified on the fly to no longer involve plastic towering parts. The uninformed were none-the-wiser. Mother-of-the-bride, who reported making it through the ceremony without crying, suddenly lost her breath and was overcome with teary emotion when she first saw the cake. In the still somewhat shocked state of the sudden aftermath, this is one of the possibilities the girl is allowing herself to dwell in: how moved and amazed the mother of the bride was to see, what to her was, the most beautiful wedding cake ever prepared.
Wedding Cake, The Preface
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!
Timelessness
If you remember a time
when the Smothers Brothers
surpassed Bonanza in viewers
why is it that you remember?
Was there a heart of the matter?
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This is timeless, I think…
(johnw.hays) Sep 12, 2002 17:20
Meanwhile, his partner is wandering around randomly through the catacombs of my brain, purposefully dragging his feet to snag wires and cables, breaking connections, holding his arms in the air simultaneously to do the same. In his feigned lack of concentration he blows air through pursed lips as if to whistle, except just short of that so the sound is really only air. About as nonchalant as anyone with a hint of a purpose could ever possibly appear.
IF, for some amazing reason, any fragment of an intentional, productive thought were to be maintained for more than a few hundred seconds, he deftly stumbles hard against the nearest surface to render the focus suddenly askant and significantly altered from the previous depth of view.
Just for good measure, he then quickly begins plugging connections back in, though certainly not in the same receptacles from which they were yanked moments earlier.
Makes me tired just reading it.
From the Archives
I recently re-discovered this word-painting of a July cloudburst I wrote back in July of 2002…
Playin’ in the Rain
Picture the protracted heat and tropic humidity of the consummate summer extreme. Consider the moment when days upon days of overexposing blasts of intense July sun and heat finally give in to the interruption of boiling piles of cloud and the electric anticipation of pending eruption, as opposing air masses collide overhead. Marvel at the quickness with which change takes place. Wonder at the speed of rushing air that intuition tells you should be cool, while senses still perceive heat. When the cloud finally bursts, and the torrents are crashing down, you barely hesitate. Regardless the natural inclination to seek shelter, you step out to feel the weight of impact on your head. With clothes now sticking and drooping with the weight of water, just try to act mature. The pavement steams and simmers, calming your feet with accumulated warmth, while at the same time infusing you with the irrepressible provocation to dance. Arms fling out, head rolls back and splashing ensues. No matter how old you really are, you are a kid again. Silence is not an option. You are as wet as you can possibly be, and at this moment, you wouldn’t have it any other way.
That surely must have come from memories of my youth. We don’t get rain like that here any more. The metropolitan area surrounding the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul has grown so much that we now have a big enough heat-dome over the area to impact the weather. The majority of weather fronts approaching the vicinity of my home, located at the southwest corner of the metro area, tend to break up and slide around to the north and south now days.
I bet if we got doused again like the writing above describes, I would be strongly tempted to go out and play in it like I remember doing when I was a kid. I remember one time when we were able to swim in the flooded corn field across the road from our house after a particularly heavy down pour.
Ah, those were the days. The good ol’ days. I can say that now that I’m old. I suppose the farmer didn’t think it was as good in those amounts at one time, but it sure was exciting. A time when we couldn’t resist the lure to play in the rain.
A Summertime Story
This is a true story about a boy and a dunk tank. You can trust me on this one. I was there. It all played out under the friendly sunshine of a Midwestern 4th of July celebration, back before the turn of the millennium, at an annual gathering held by the collective families that make up the Wildwood Lodge Club, a private association of seven clans that have joined forces to create a vacation-home getaway in Northwestern Wisconsin.
Our tradition for celebrating Independence Day includes plenty of the classics: a parade (kids ride on hay bales in a red, white, and blue decorated trailer behind the old Ford tractor); competitions of three-legged races, water balloon toss, a scavenger hunt (among many others); a pot-luck dinner; and a dramatic finish of fireworks over the lake.
What began decades earlier as primarily an event focused on one generation of children, had now evolved to incorporate the development of quite a number of third-generation kids and cousins. As a result, organizers were always looking to include new and innovative improvements to traditional entertainment. The dunk tank was a natural addition. Butch, the caretaker, was a local resident and member of the Lion’s Club who had access to a tank, which, amazingly, had no other commitments for the occasion.
This being a new game on our regular itinerary, a lot of questions began to surface regarding the actual process of whom, how, and when. My son, Julian, was six or seven years old, one of the younger members of that second generation of kids at that time. He surprised me with what appeared to be an unnatural level of apprehension about how the rules of this game might develop. In my mind, it didn’t really matter, because I figured he would be more likely to participate in the fish pond event than this new dunk tank.
One popular suggestion was to have the ‘thrower’ who successfully drops a heckling ‘sitter’ into the tank, be awarded the dubious honor of claiming the seat themselves, for the next round. In the end, majority rule decided the watered-down ‘sitter’ who got dunked would earn the right to pick the next victim from the crowd. This rankled my son quite a bit; sincerely fearful of facing the fate of this tank that was easily over his head in-depth, not to mention quite a drop from a perch that was about three times as high as he was tall. I worked to assure him that no one would put him in such peril. Worst case, I assured him I would volunteer to take his turn if someone picked him. He seemed less than convinced of his safety.
It wasn’t difficult to find a volunteer for first ‘sitter’ out of the crowd of 20-year-olds that made up the trailing number of first-generation kids in the group. The challenge was maintaining order in the crowd of willing ‘throwers’ that jostled for position to get their hands on the tennis balls waiting to be launched. With the variety of ages participating, two lines to throw from were drawn, allowing the youngest arms better odds of success. Julian took a position toward the end of the little kids’ line to give him a chance to observe the proceedings a bit before getting himself too involved.
We took turns between the younger throwers and the bigger ‘kids’ (of all ages). The perpetual battle of accuracy versus velocity played out over and over. The still-dry heckler began to hone his craft with the protracted practice he was enjoying. Then, without the slightest warning of what was about to unfold, my son reached the front of his line. He was one of the smaller kids there. I’m sure many allowed themselves to be distracted for the moment, reaching for their pop can, laughing with a friend, getting the sucker out of their daughter’s hair.
Julian reached back, lifted his leg, turned, and fired a frozen-rope line-drive throw that nailed that battered metal disc of a target. Without hesitation, that big guy who had moments earlier been heckling boldly, dropped like a limp doll into the waiting chill of the waters of our great new attraction at the Wildwood 4th of July celebration. Oh, the revelry that ensued! Oh, the look on Julian’s face; half pride, half fear. What had he done? What was everybody freaking out about? What was going to happen to him now? Suddenly, I felt the rush of everything he had been hinting toward earlier. I grew apprehensive. Was I going to have to protect him from somebody’s well-intentioned revenge? I also wondered, “Did he have an intuition that this might actually happen?!”
Fortunately for me, it was all too funny to get caught up in seeking reparations, and some other guy was rallied to the seat. Much of the residual trash talking was targeted at the group of throwers for their letting little Julian be the one to dunk the first person. The line of well-capable throwers was about twice as long as the number of little ones half-again closer. It served to amplify the appearance of disparity that it was Julian who first achieved success.
Do you know the phenomenon that happens as a stand-up comedian gets on a roll? That initial laughter loosens things up to allow for greater laughs to follow, and then each subsequent punch line brings greater and greater laughter? Imagine our reaction if, as people cycle through the line taking turns throwing, Julian ended up being the one to dunk the next guy. Well, he did. Our laughter was all-encompassing. This was just the half of it.
After this scene played out a third time, and the laughter began to mix with increasing wonder and amazement, I negotiated with my son to get him to move back from the little kids’ line.
“Why?” he asked, with genuine innocence and a measure of disappointment.
“Because you can!” I implored.
I had people coming to me to marvel over my little pitching prodigy. I think one of them wanted to negotiate rights to his contract. Sure I’d played catch with him in the driveway, but I didn’t know he could do this!
Finally, it became apparent that the crowd was interested in some compensation for the success he had been enjoying at their expense. I dutifully took my position on the perch. This was not a comfortable place for me. It seemed much higher from this vantage point and proved to be dramatically more stressful than I imagined, waiting for the clank of the mechanism to send me to my doom. “This must be the apprehension Julian was experiencing,” I thought to myself. “I see where he gets it.” I never got around to plying the craft of the heckle. I must admit, even I enjoyed the poignancy of the moment Julian stepped to the front of the line.
He dropped me into the water with aplomb. I immediately picked his mother to replace me.
“You’re half responsible for this!” I sprayed from the ladder.
I think someone may have helped Julian sneak back to the front of the line before his rightful turn. He dunked her with identical ease.
In all, Julian dropped seven people into the bath that afternoon; more than all other successful throwers combined. No other individual throwers accomplished more than a single dunking. The dunk-tank event won a spot in the 4th of July games for several more years, eventually fading from popularity. The memories of that first time have earned a spot alongside some of the greatest in the annals of WWLC lore.
Julian did go on to play some baseball. Batted left and threw right. He rose through the ranks from tee-ball to machine pitch and then kid pitch. His last team even made it to a championship game, facing a team outside his regular league. He had a problem with that. Another one of those premonitions. His anxiety over getting hit by this pitcher seemed illogically out of proportion to me, and to my wife, as well.
As we examined the redness on his skin at the site of impact, marveling at the detail of the stitches of the ball becoming more apparent with time, he informed us that he would never be participating in this sport of baseball again.
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Republished
| From my archives… originally written for a different audience, Jun 15, 2002 but relatively timeless I think: |
Today, elect not to interpret the world knocking on your door as inherently hostile and specifically aimed at you.
Consider the possibility that it is not about us all the time. And sometimes when two people are chasing after the same ball, they bump shoulders.
I’d like to slough off all the accumulated hurts that I unconsciously clutch from the times I’ve been bumped and didn’t have the insight to look past and accept as a part of the game, and in good spirit, carry on with eyes on a higher prize.
Life. Play on. It isn’t specifically all about you, and it can be fun.
this message brought to you by the ‘I’ve heard one too many people whine today’ committee in hopes of making each of us a little less important than we thought we were when we launched into our self indulgent tirade that really wasn’t meant to serve anyone but ourselves in the long run as we elect to lower others in hopes of making us feel better in lieu of the harder choice of overriding the fight or flight triggers to work on the mightier task of dragging us up by the bootstraps and rising to the occasion to seek better from ourselves first and then as quickly seeking the best from others, even when it is hiding in their own fight and flight turmoil.
…or something like that.
Relative Something 