Beech Tree News Network

"Aggie has hair that goes off and on,” my granddaughter, Sabria, tells me this as I’m changing clothes in her great-grandmother’s guest room.  “Want to see?” She takes me by the hand and leads me to the closet in the other room.  I never knew Aggie had a wig.  Kids uncover all the best secrets.
    We are in Alabama for the weekend in order to celebrate Garey’s mom, Aggie’s, birthday.  She is turning 88 this month, and we felt it was an occasion to be marked by all of us.  Earlier in the week, Sabria decided we should make the birthday cake ourselves.  She selected strawberry from the cake mixes I had on hand.  She measured and poured and beat until the batter was beautifully silky and ready to be poured into the 9x13 pan then waited in front of the oven door until the cake was done then waited in front of the cake until the cake was cooled.
    We frosted the cake with home-made butter cream frosting and she decorated with one of those squeeze tube frosting gels.  She made a red cross, a red flower, a square birthday cake with candles (I know, it was a birthday cake on a birthday cake…who knows the underlying reason) and Aggie’s name.  When it was finished, she was pleased, so I was pleased.
    When we arrived in Alabama on Friday evening, Sabria decided Aggie needed to see her presents immediately—the blackberry jam, the bouquet of flowers, the mattress pad she’d been wanting—but not the cake.  The cake was a surprise and could not be viewed until the actual birthday dinner the following night.  For Sabria, the cake is the most important part of any birthday.
    On Saturday evening, we had a dinner that Garey’s sister, Charlotte, cooked then little Sabria placed all the candles she had in her package on Aggie’s cake.  Garey and I lit the candles and Sabria carried the cake over to Aggie as we sang Happy Birthday.  I will never forget how they both glowed in the candle light and how they both blew out the candles together.  Aggie often says to me, “Maybe she will remember me.”  I think Aggie needn’t worry.
    When I was a kid, the birthday cake was always home-made, and it was always the most important part of the birthday to me, as well.  My stepmom always made a cake of whatever she had at hand.  She didn’t take requests.  She always frosted it with confectioner sugar icing and always managed to write Happy Birthday in the icing, sometimes with those candy letters that my sisters and I ended up fighting over.  I think birthday cakes were a big deal to me because it was one of the rare times I was able to be in the lime light.  In large families like ours, that wasn’t an every-day occurrence.
    I always ordered my own children’s birthday cakes.  They were always themed—Barbie, Ninja Turtles, Disney princess, dinosaurs.  I’ve never had the best luck at making cakes, any kind, not just birthday.  When Nikki was little, she would call them earthquake cakes, because of the tendency of my cakes to split down the middle, sometimes while still in the pan. 
    For Garey’s fortieth birthday, I ordered a special sheet cake from Riley’s Bakery in Bowling Green.  It was decorated with an underwater and beach scene.  Garey has always loved the ocean.  We planned a big party, and the cake was the last thing to be picked up before the festivities began.  I took Natalie and Nikki with me in the old green van we had at the time.  I placed the cake on the third row of seats, buckled the kids into the second row and headed for home.
    Unbeknownst to me, Nikki, who was three at the time, unbuckled her seat belt and climbed over her seat and onto the third row seat in order to get a better look at the cake.  She did this just as I was making my ascent up and around the curve that was Hadley Hill.  Nikki was tossed butt-first into Garey’s cake.   I pulled over, viewed the damage, and totally overreacted.  She and Natalie cried the rest of the way home.  When we got home, I apologized to them for going nuts over a cake, and we worked on salvaging what we could.  We were able to save most of the cake, although the palm trees and fish looked as if they had been hit by a tsunami.  Garey laughed when he saw it, which is what I should have done, which is what the kids did when he laughed, and it has become one of our favorite birthday cake stories.  Which is really what birthday cakes are all about…butt prints and happy memories.