TCWG Short story Journal 7

It's Palm Sunday today. I used to love being given a palm cross to take home from Sunday school. In Italy it is olive branches which are tied with ribbon and blessed.

It's someone special's birthday today. My youngest son.
The first thing I think of when there is a birthday is the cake. The first thing I do when I want to cheer myself up is bake a cake. the first thing I do when someone is coming for tea is bake a cake.
The first thing I remember doing with my mum in the kitchen was making a cake. She taught me with such patience, so gentle and sweet she was. We assembled the ingredients on the kitchen table, flour, eggs, sugar, butter. Then we weighed them out, took a large mixing bow, blue and white striped, a wooden spoon, a fork and a metal spoon.
First we creamed the butter and sugar with the wooden spoon.
When it was light and fluffy we whisked in the eggs with a fork.
When that was all mixed nicely we folded in the flour with a metal spoon.
This was the way we always made a cake. Calm, unhurried, gently, all our love going into the cake, knowing how happy everyone would be when they saw there was a cake for tea. Sometimes we would add chocolate, sometimes, lemon, sometimes coffee and walnut. It might be sandwiched together with raspberry jam and dusted with icing sugar, it might be sandwiched together with butter cream and topped with more butter cream or glace icing.
I have never used a mixer to make a cake, those motions of cream, whisk, fold bring back such sweet happy memories.

Why all this about a cake you might ask? Well it's my son's birthday, and thinking about cakes made me think that we all are a bit like a cake.
If you see pictures of those rainbow cakes, when they are sliced you see lots of different layers, each a different colour or flavour.
We are like that, on the top, the decoration might be plain, a scattering of almonds, a dusting of icing sugar or for special occasions cherries, piping, sugar figures, as fancy as you wish.
Underneath the layers for each of us is different, at the top maybe the things you share with casual acquaintances, those friendly faces you meet while out and about but you don't them very well, then another layer for more intimate friends where you will share information  about your family, the books you like reading, the films you watch, the hobbies you have. Then again another layer for closer friends and family where you will share your hopes, dreams and fears, and son on then right at the bottom there might be a dark place where you don't want to go, where your pain, disappointments, fears, nightmares lurk.


When you get down there go outside into the garden, onto the balcony and take a deep breath, look at the sky, look at the moon, the stars, the birds flying around, the swallows are already circling.
Think of a poem you like, a song that is in your heart and remember that we are all together travelling companions and looking out for each other.

Here is my poem for the day by Samuel Daniel (1562-1619) he had a to be a poet with a name like that

Now each creature joys the other
Passing happy days and hours,
One bird reports unto another
By the fall of silver showers;
Whilst the earth, our common mother,
Hath her bosom decked with flowers.

I think I will go and bake a cake now.