We
recently celebrated our eldest daughter’s third birthday. Her birthday party was planned for Sunday so
we spent the entire day on Saturday getting ready. We cleaned the house and we cut the grass. We filled a gift box for each child coming,
with balloons, stickers, sidewalk chalk and a canister of Play Doh. We topped each gift box with a little flower
made from crepe paper. We hung the hand-made
birthday banner we made two years ago for her first birthday – when we cut and
glued large letters and circles of colored paper to make each letter and then strung them together on a ribbon for the "Happy Birthday" banner.
And,
of course, we baked a cake. Or, I should
say, my husband baked a cake.
The
process started early in the morning. My
husband planned the basic elements: he would make a white layer cake with
yellow frosting. He researched recipes,
made his shopping list and dashed to the grocery store for missing
ingredients. By mid-morning he had
baked two layers, decided they weren’t enough, and then baked two more. We would have a four-layer layer cake. After lunch, it was time to make the frosting
and fondant. My husband decided he
wanted to decorate the cake with fondant flowers. He had never made fondant before, so he
searched the Internet for recipes, chose one, and dashed off to the grocery
store again for a few more missing ingredients.
He also needed a flower-shaped cookie cutter so he popped into a vintage
kitchenware store to search through a box of cookie cutters for just the right
shape. By late afternoon the frosting
and fondant were done, colored with the just-right shades of white, yellow and
orange, and tucked into the ‘fridge for safekeeping.
Finally,
after dinner was done, after the house was sufficiently clean, and after the
kids were in bed, my husband brought out the cake layers, the frosting and the
fondant for the final assembly. I
watched him frost and stack each layer, watched him roll out the fondant,
and watched him cut the flowers from the fondant. I watched him carefully plan the placement of
the fondant flowers across the top of the cake and around the sides. Then, finally, I watched him place each
of the flowers on the frosted cake.
The
finished cake was astonishing. It was
beautiful. “It’s amazing,” I told
him. “But I can’t believe you spent the
whole day making a cake.”
He shrugged. “I remember when I was
a kid, visiting my grandmother’s house for Christmas. She would get up in the morning when it was
still dark and make a coconut cake, and I would help her. I remember when I was in the second grade my
mom made cupcakes for my class at Halloween.
I remember the orange frosting and I remember helping her frost those
cupcakes. I want those memories for our
children too.”
My
husband’s family is from the South. His
father’s family is from a small town in Louisiana and his mother’s family is
from a small town in Virginia. Our three
children will grow up in San Francisco, in a neighborhood wedged between the
Castro and the Lower Haight. They will
have two gay dads, one white and one African American.
They were born in New Delhi, India through the miracle of modern
medicine, an Indian egg donor and two Indian surrogates. Our children are a long way from the
South. But, standing in that kitchen
with my husband and looking at that cake, I realized my children will grow up
with traditions rooted deeply in his Southern family and
the generations of African American women who cared for their children and their families in
very special ways.
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| Coco on her third birthday, April 23, 2014 |
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| Coco's cake |
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| Coco and Grandma Connie |
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| Coco's Great Grandmother Etta |
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| Coco's Great Grandmother Minnie |
