How Long Does It Really Take To Bake A Cake?

As a FT working (outside of the house) mom, I often lament not having more time to do things like bake a cake with my kids. About a month ago I promised we would all make a cake. Not just any cake, but Miss Aggie’s -- my childhood best friend’s mother’s -- homemade carrot cake. I could have easily bought a mix, but no, I chose to make a cake that requires two full cups of freshly grated carrots, among other various sifted, chopped, strained and labor-intensive ingredients, topped off with her out of this world cream cheese frosting.

I tend to dream large.

For a month the kids waited, but as deadlines piled up and weekends came and went, ingredients bought with good intentions sat unused. My dear ones smiled weakly every time I made the same lame, cheerful excuse: “It’s okay, we’ll make the cake next weekend!”

I give them an A+ for optimism. They never gave up on me.

I finally got a break last weekend and you might think the story ends there…

Ha!

I suspect Julia Child never made a gluten free, low glycemic, coconut sugar (I made some substitutions), cake from scratch with a 4-year old sous chef and a broken electric mixer.

My 4-year old (not unlike most preschoolers), is quite independent. When she insisted on cracking the eggs for the cake I thought nothing of it. We own chickens and she’s become a bit of an egg expert -- collecting fresh eggs every morning, helping to crack and scramble them… why wouldn’t I trust her with this one simple task?

So, I left her to crack the FOUR eggs the recipe called for -- reminding her to be careful and pick out any shells while I busied myself sifting flour and chopping of nuts.

Eggs cracked, my daughter started buzzing around my legs and under my arms, doing her: “Mama can I help you?” dance. Sure, of course, I replied. Hold this. Do that. Don’t drink the vanilla. It’s yucky. Be careful. Don’t fall off your chair. Wait, why are you standing a chair? Where’s your step stool? I love you, Mama. I love you, Bubba. Mama, can I do it. Let me do it! LET ME! She was determined to do everything and her demands jangled my nerves. But we were doing this. 
And I was happy. Meanwhile, my son watched TV -- his contribution to our joint family effort.

Finally, the moment had arrived; ingredients were assembled and ready to be mixed. I got out the hand mixer but couldn’t locate one of the blades. Deep breath. No worries. It’s here, I said. 10 minutes later it wasn’t anywhere to be found. Not in any of the drawers, cupboards or baskets. No worries, I told my little one, we have an old hand mixer. What’s that, she asked? Well it’s from the olden days -- when people didn’t use as much electricity. She scrunched her nose. I knew she was struggling to understand what was happening.

Valiantly, we tried to use my mom’s old mixer (Why I’ve kept this ancient artifact I’ve had since college is a story for another time about my inability to part with sentimental items.) We worked in vain to stir the batter, but it was too thick and the blades kept getting stuck.  I thought it was because we had used the gluten free flour, so I started my search for the missing electric mixer blade.

Moments later, success! I found it! But when we turned it on, the blades gyrated and then soon ground to a halt. There would be no magical mixing. Our electric mixer was broken. I remembered it had acted funky the last time I used it -- the motor must have burnt out. By this point, my daughter was covered in flour and butter and singing and quickly losing interest.

I rallied. Cheerfully said, we’ll use a wooden spoon, just like the REALLY olden days! She narrowed her eyes and gave me a stern stare. And I knew she was too young to know history and too stubborn to ask what I was talking about.

She quickly switched the subject and asked if I wanted to play hide and seek.

I was losing her. Fast.

I refused to give up. We can do this, I promised. I stirred the shit out of that batter with a wooden spoon and felt just like Laura Ingles. It took a while, but finally I got the batter to a nice, albeit thick, consistency. Proud of my effort, we moved on. My daughter delighted in helping me grease the pans and dust them with flour. Finally, we poured the batter and popped the cakes in the oven. This was really happening. I AM one of those mothers, I told myself. Whatever those mothers I put on pedestals do, I was doing it too.

Happily, we started cleaning up. That’s when I noticed TWO eggs on the counter. Two errant eggs, looking very similar to the ones I had put out earlier to be cracked by my four-year-old sous chef and used in the cake.

“Did you put four eggs in the bowl,” I asked Bubba?

“Yes,” she replied.

“Are you sure," I asked gently.  “Four or two?”

“Four!”

I asked again. Showing her four fingers then two. “Four or two,” I said slowly.

She studied my hands, looked to my face, then back to my hands again I saw the wheels turning.  She put something together, set her little jaw in defiance and glared -- “Two!”

“Two? You put two eggs in the bowl,” I said, not trying to sound critical.

“Mama I said two!!!”  She screamed, angry red faced, as if this was somehow my fault now.

I downplayed it and explained lightly with a smile -- “So, that’s why the cake was so hard to mix. There wasn’t enough liquid.”

She was hopping up and down on her chair -- ignoring me. Her way of saying, fuck you. It's not my fault.

Breathe. No worries. It’s a just a cake I told myself. I’ll take it out of the oven and add the eggs. Bubba didn’t want me to. It became an argument, but I skillfully negotiated -- if the recipe called for four eggs, it wouldn’t be tasty enough with only two.

At this point I had bigger problems on my mind. I seriously began to wonder if my daughter could count, which I know she can, but for some reason I started questioning her preschool experience and rapidly fell down the, we suck as parents wormhole. Meanwhile, the cake had been cooking for 7 minutes.

I was committed to following this promise through to the end, so out of the oven popped the cakes. Quick cut to -- carrot cake redux -- I scooped out the warm batter and added in the missing eggs, remixed the batter, washed the pans, re-greased and dusted them with flour and returned the cakes to the oven.

By the time we pulled the finished cakes from the oven, it was dinnertime and then bath, book and bedtime. Somebody was tired and experienced much disappointment when I broke the news we would have to wait to frost the cake until the morning.

The next day we did. If stirring cake batter with a wooden spoon was hard, you can only imagine what it was like to mix cream cheese and butter.

The cake came out beautifully and everyone remarked how delicious it was and how beautifully it was decorated.

Bubba had picked flowers from our yard. She beamed with delight as she squashed them on the plate. I plucked off a few ants and re-arranged them around the cake when she wasn’t looking and then I took a lot of pictures. So that whenever I feel like I’m failing as a mother, I’ll remember my four-year old and our four-egg cake...

.... and smile.

Letting Go. A Mother's Snotty, Tearful Acceptance

Sometimes when my life is a blur and I can’t imagine adding another thing to my overly ambitious “to do” list.  When my husband’s been out of town and I’ve been on deadline, barely sleeping, sitting way too much, fingers arthritic from typing, typing, typing, when my back is in spasms (from sitting way too much) and my brain exhausted from thinking up story ideas, one after another and another, when my kids look like ragamuffins and their rooms are in a state of post apocalyptic hurricane destruction, when dirty dishes are piled up in the sink, and baskets of laundry sit unattended, when toys, books, papers are scattered everywhere and our refrigerator smells like there’s a dead rat rotting in some forgotten, moldy take-out container, when the thought of changing a single roll of toilet paper feels like the proverbial straw that just might break this camel’s back... 

On days like these, when my work output is actually pretty good, but my self-esteem has plummeted because I feel like the biggest loser/failure of a mother/functioning/coherent adult, the last thing I need on days like these is to add more guilt to my already overwhelming massive sense of guilt about neglecting the needs of my family.

But sometimes life brings you unexpected gifts that completely jolt you into a hyper real sense of knowing -- knowing that despite the rotten smelly refrigerator and unfinished “to do” list, you are a mother and a good one at that.

Today’s gift came in the form of a thunderbolt that struck at the most unexpected time in the most unexpected place.  I was doing nothing particularly memorable -- just parking my car in the parking lot at Veggie Grill waiting to go buy my son a surprise tofu chicken nugget lunch -- his favorite -- when it hit me that my 11-year-old boy was having his first sleepover tonight.  He’s had friends stay over at our house, but this is the first time he was staying someplace else -- without us.

The thought of him brushing his teeth in somebody else’s bathroom, peeing in their toilet, his spindly legs climbing into someone else’s bed and putting his shaggy head to sleep on someone else’s pillow -- these mundane images triggered the most unexpected deep, primal, guttural responses I’ve ever had.  I became a mess -- flooded with waves of powerful emotions -- image upon image of my son’s childhood bubbling up, sweeping me into a sea of jumbled memories -- giggles and blown out diapers, onesies covered in spaghetti sauce, cardboard boxes turned into spaceships to take a trip to the moon and the following hysteria that followed when it was realized cardboard boxes aren’t spaceships and the trip would be an imaginary one, remembering how we always had to save a place at the table for Audie, an imaginary friend with green hair and orange skin and purple eyes who came with us everywhere for two + years.  Memories of so many firsts: First days at schools, first fevered nights, projectile vomiting flus, nursery rhymes and splinters, first words and first fears, sticky cotton candied baby fingers, wiggly toes in his footie jammies, the sound of Moos and cock-a-doodle-doos, when pre-verbal animal sounds were the only form of conversation we had.  On and on the memories of the last eleven years with my son came tumbling out in random, nonsensical order.

I was a crying, snotty mess.  

I told myself to stop.  I was being silly.  To get my shit together.  It’s not like I’m shipping my son off to college, I said.  It’s a sleepover -- a simple, normal, coming of age/right of passage everyday occurrence that children and parents everywhere go through. 

But I couldn’t stop.  No matter how rational I tried to be, because when I start crying I cry until I’m wrung dry. 

And today that took about twenty minutes.  I let myself indulge and when I was finally done, I felt a release that I haven’t felt since my performance days as a dancer -- a transcendent spiritual transformation.  Like I had released all the pain and guilt and sorrow of unrequited motherhood and I was on the other side of something -- something profound and significant.  As bittersweet and painful as it was to relive all those memories it was equally joyful.

It felt like I'd been baptised.  Like my heart had burst and left me with a deeper sense of connection to myself -- the self I’ve known ever since I can remember knowing anything that required words to describe it. 

I had let go -- survived this new growing pain and I felt better.  Still feel better because the feeling has stayed with me all day. 

I have so much love for this little man who is on his way in the world -- well, a few houses down the street -- but still making strides towards independence. 

Why am I sharing this?  I guess because if you’re like me -- always-busy working -- it’s easy to blow through life’s transitions and rites of passages. 

My son made a transition today I will never forget.  A part of me let a piece of him go and as silly as it may seem it’s a big deal to me. 

He’s growing up. 

Me too.

UPDATE:  10:17pm.  The phone rang and it was our boy.  He wanted to say goodnight and tell us he loved us.  He kissed and hugged the phone and all is well in the world…