Let THEM Eat Cake
This is by T. Frances
The names in this essay have been changed.
Cake name has been changed to protect the innocent.
My husband loves cake. Let me clarify---my husband loves one kind of cake. The cake he adores isn’t just any old run of the mill store bought cake. Oh no, it’s an extremely special cake. This cake has a super secret recipe that’s been handed down from generation to generation. Like a new medieval wife is handed the kitchen accounts from her mother-in-law, each newly married-in wife in my husband’s family is handed this super secret vanilla cake recipe. For over 60 years, each new wife has happily accepted the passing of the spatula, eager to fill the mother role in her husband’s world. Each newly married-in wife, but this one.
I’ve never felt hatred toward any sort of baked good, until this cake. Over the years I have grown to loathe this overly sugary vanilla confection so much, I refuse to bake it. My refusal to bake this super special cake has been a recipe for disaster throughout my entire married life.
“I’m going to teach you how to bake Josh’s favorite cake,” my mother-in-law, Sue, animatedly informs me one afternoon.
Not wanting to make waves, I agree to an afternoon of baking. I didn’t mention that I’d never baked a cake in my life. I also neglected to disclose another key fact--I really don’t enjoy cooking.
I’ve never experienced the joy of cooking. I cook because I must eat and my creative process in the kitchen pretty much ends there. There were times in college that I tried to find the joy in stirring and whisking. I wanted to prepare fancy meals for my beaus and impress them with my dessert making prowess. I wanted to experience that surge of Betty Crocker-like pride; but that feeling never came. I willingly hung up my apron, ordered take-out, and never looked back.
As promised, Sue took me into her kitchen and walked me through the family’s super secret vanilla cake baking process. Sue hovered over the counter observing me clumsily break eggs and spill flour. My hands started trembling as I took hold of the electric mixer for the first time. Batter was flying, butter was melting, and I envisioned myself as June Cleaver in an episode of Leave it to Beaver. I was the quintessential mom with perfectly coiffed hair, tiny pearl necklace, and dainty high heels baking in the kitchen. I was the devoted wife and mother, filmed in soft flawless black and white, doing what was expected of me--creating delicious dinners and grand desserts.
My hands became sweaty and the plastic handle of the electric mixer grew slippery. The smell of the cake batter fed the butterflies in my stomach and gave them a sugar high. This was not my world. I had always seen myself in flawed living color. I was more comfortable in a “Family Ties” kind of world where there were acid wash jeans, thick ugly sweaters, and microwaveable dinners. I was more comfortable in a world where roles were not automatically assigned, but discovered. That was where I wanted to live.
I began to understand that this cake is filled with more than just eggs and sugar. It’s filled with expectation.
Josh’s mother never took him into the kitchen on a lazy Sunday afternoon to bestow upon him his own family secret, nor has he ever asked to be shown. Josh is not expected to bake vanilla cake. I am. I’m the wife. Wives bake. This is what wives have done. This is what wives are expected to do. We wives are given this super secret recipe so that we can show our men, in sugary cake slices, just how much we love them. And these men, my father-in-law, my brother-in-law, and my husband, expect cake.
“If you loved me you would bake it,” my husband declared one day.
“If you loved me YOU would bake it,” I suggested.
This cake has been a sticky subject with the entire family. Every member of Josh’s family has taken me aside to ask me if I’ve tried out this recipe. One hopeful Christmas my mother-in-law even gifted me a large cake baking thermometer.
The Christmas thermometer was the icing on the vanilla cake. I had to come up with a solution--a recipe Josh and I both could swallow.
“I’ve been thinking,” I began after take-out one evening, “I know how much you love your vanilla cake, and you know how much I hate cooking...so maybe it would be fun if we tried baking it together?”
Josh thought. Josh sighed. Josh agreed.
It’s been five years and so far no vanilla cake has graced our oven; however, if it ever does it won’t be because I’m expected to fill a role predetermined for me. In our relationship, Josh and I each bring our own dishes to the table. That’s how I see it. That’s my key ingredient for a working and happy marriage. We understand each other enough to know that a balanced mix is required for our relationship to continue to rise...even if the cake never does.
About the Author
T. Frances is a freelance writer living in California with her husband. Her work has been seen in "True Story Magazine," the on-line magazine "Clever.mag," and the poetry journal "Nomad's Choir."
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