it's Spring, so I made the cake

There are certain traditions I don't really care a hoot about. Like the whole Christmas tree thing. I know many people are really into Christmas trees and pulling out the ornaments they've had for years and years, but I just don't get into that. I'm not as good at holding onto "things" as I am holding onto memories. But there are certain moments from my childhood that I cherish and am a little obsessive about and will repeat every year at the same time till I am dead and gone. Like making the decorated Christmas cookies exactly the same way we made them when I was a kid--same recipe, same colors, decorated the same way. Christmas isn't the same for me without those cookies. And dyeing Easter eggs in four colors the way my dad taught us, crafty fellow that he was. Dip half in yellow, dip half in pink. Turn the egg the other way and dip half in blue. So we'd end up with an egg that was pink and yellow and purple and green. You can do this at home. I've passed the trick on to my own kids. We make the plaid egg. Every year.

And the cake, too. My mom found this idea in a Family Circle or Woman's Day or some such magazine, circa 1970. Here is how you do it--Make an angel food cake. Cover it with fluffy icing tinted pale pink, pale green, or like I did this year, light blue. Then, with a clean pair of scissors, snip several marshmallows into five pieces like this: Hold the marshmallow with the round part towards you, snip all the way through like you are snipping a thin slice off the top of it. Do that three more times to the same marshmallow, turning it into five thin slices. The marshmallow slices curl up a bit and look like flower petals. Arrange them on the cake into five-petaled flowers. Use mini-marshmallows (or this year I used pastel m&m candies because I already had them) for the center of the flowers. The original recipe called for cutting another marshmallow into little bits and dipping the bits into yellow food coloring for the daisy centers. I ad-lib this part. I'm not completely compulsive.

I've been making this cake, with my mom and then on my own, since that first time in about 1970. I might've missed a few years when I was in college, but I make it every year now, religiously. And I mean that word "religiously" quite literally. The cake is a tiny shrine I build to my mom, to my childhood, to my own family. Every year I parade it through the house, carrying it like I'm carrying a statue of Shiva to the holy river, showing everyone the beautiful cake. "Look at my beautiful cake! Look at my beautiful cake," I implore them.

Will my kids remember how to make the cake? Will they ever want to make the cake? My mother never asked me to keep making the cake. There is just something child-like and comforting about doing it. People smile when they see the cake. I can't say to my sons, "Make the cake. Do this silly thing in remembrance of me." Maybe it will be some other small thing that I'm not even aware of that they carry with them like a holy relic into their own homes.