On Wednesday my older son turned twenty. Twenty.

Two whole decades with this boy, lived and done. Not in the blink of an eye, mind you (I’d never say that) but gone all the same. I am not prone to melancholy — I don’t long to turn back the clock (horrors!) or stop time (never!) — so the throbbing ache I feel pulls me up short.

And, compounding my heart-twisting is this: His aging marks mine. For each new milestone he reaches, I’m knocked, too, into new territory, a place I’m not altogether sure I want to be. This, I guess, is the gift of the firstborn.

Not to be a killjoy! I am happy, truly. We’re so lucky, of course we are. Everything is moving forward as it should, as we want it to.

And yet…

For his cake, I decided to go with snowboarding, since that’s what he loves. Well, snowboarding and all things fancy cars (which always prompts me to fuss, Can you possibly be any more of a young male stereotype?), but snowboarding, unlike a Ferrari, is actually attainable.

So! It’d be a cake mountain, a snowboarding person, the works.

However, since I couldn’t find any instructions or copy-worthy models, I was forced to venture out on my own which, since I’m horrible at puzzles, taking directions, map reading, geometry, or anything that requires spatial imaginings was stress inducing. I may have even lost a bit of sleep (until I realized that I could use my pillow as a model, smashing in slopes with the side of my hand to get a feel for how it might work).

In the midst of stressing, I made chocolate (his request) cakes, four of them, because the least I could do was stack cake to make a mountain, right? And then I roped in the younger three kids — they are all better at “seeing” things than I am — and together we made it work, more or less.

We first stacked and trimmed the cakes to get a general idea of our mountain. Then we numbered the cakes and de-assembled them so we could simple syrup them with a coffee simple syrup.

We restacked them, spreading coffee buttercream between each layer, and then I dirty iced them with Italian meringue buttercream, smooshing on more cake wherever I needed bumps. When the mountain was finally iced to my satisfaction, I swirled in a little light blue frosting on the vertical spots, for shadowing.

Then the fun part: fondant!

I never thought I’d say that. I am not keen on finicky decorations, but there’s something about fondant. It’s like playdough, but funner. It was meditative almost, all the rolling and shaping and gluing and sparkling, or it would have been if the kids didn’t fight nonstop.

We made all sorts of things: stars, a snowboard and person, gum paste evergreens, snowmen, scarves, a snow fort with snowballs, a sign, etc. My younger son built a ski lift out of toothpicks and wood and paper folders, and he made paper cones that the girls covered in blue buttercream for a second species of evergreen. For the final touch, sanding sugar for snow.

A list of the things I bought:
Tylose powder, to turn fondant into gum paste
A big bottle of glycerin, because I’m sick of buying tiny overpriced bottles at the store
Lollipop sticks, to anchor the fondant decorations to the cake
Gel colors
Fondant cutters, which were more useful than I thought they’d be, especially the rolling pin
White glitter dust, to make the trees and snowflakes sparkle
Sanding sugar, for snow

The beast took two days to assemble (not counting the days spent making buttercream and cakes), and I washed the kitchen floor three times. It was A Production Like None Other.

And then it was time to eat it! A cake that size definitely needs a game plan but I hadn’t thought beyond the making of it. So we ate our slices and then, slightly ill from all that sugar, I let the kids carve tunnels into the mountain before hacking it into pieces (I seriously didn’t even care) that I wrapped in plastic and trundled down to the freezer.

Out of sight, out of mind, whew.

Anyone want some cake?

This same time, years previous: nourishment, letting go, growing it out, reading-and-ice-cream evenings, our cracking whip, random, in the garden.

This year, the soiree was a little different. Instead of meeting in Auntie’s West Virginia home, she rented a house in Virginia (close to me, yay!); plus, two nights instead of one, there was a mystery guest (one of my mother’s life-long friends), and I got to play Master Chef (her words, not mine).

For the food, I had free range.

 Even though I didn’t go all out like Auntie does with her multiple courses and luxury meats (the theme, she said, was comfort food), the planning, cooking, and shopping still took a whole bunch of delicious hours, and by the end of the week the fridge was stuffed and my family was starving.

“Is that for us?” they’d ask, hungrily eyeing the cheesecake, the pans of French chocolate granola, the bagels, the plate of bacon, and when I’d answer — No, no, and no, and STOP SNITCHING — they’d sigh piteously and shuffle out of the room clutching their concave bellies.

(Once when they learned that a pan of hot buttery Parker House rolls I’d just made were for us and not the soiree, they scarfed them in mere minutes, probably because they were terrified I might change my mind.)

The Menu
Friday night: salad and cheesecake
Saturday brunch: pancakes, bacon, eggs
Saturday early afternoon dessert: Mom’s cake
Sunday breakfast/brunch: bagel bar

I couldn’t get over the house’s professional Viking Range stovetop. (Also in the kitchen: two ovens and a warming oven that I never even touched, swoooooon.) It was insane: four large and wonderfully sensitive gas burners framing an enormous, perfectly evenly heated griddle.  I stood there, flipping pancakes and warming bacon and sauteeing spinach and mushrooms and stirring cocoa, completely in my glory. Never before have I cooked on such a spectacular beast and now I am ruined.

After brunch on Saturday, we played Guess What’s In The High-Up Cupboards That No One Can Reach and the mystery guest, aged freaking SEVENTY, balanced on the edge of kitchen counter and played the role of investigator.

My mother brought a lemon cream cake for our Saturday coffee hour that she transformed into a birthday cake for the mystery guest (because she had a hunch who it might be).

Saturday night we went out for pizza and my girls joined us.

The house had a hot tub, of which we took full advantage. At first the water wasn’t hardly warm, so a couple of us compensated by first jumping in the swimming pool and then the hot tub — the pool’s icy water made the tepid tub tingly toasty.

Eventually the hot tub heated all the way up and we spent much of the afternoon, and then a few more hours that evening before bed, up to our necks in hot water, talking, talking, talking.

Sunday morning, Auntie gave us coconut wind chimes and people gave her wine and chocolate and a gorgeous linen jumper and a heart-shaped plant.

And then we packed up and went home. It was a lovely long luxurious weekend, thank you, Auntie!

P.S. My family, beyond thrilled to see that I’d returned bearing leftovers, immediately stuffed themselves with salad, pizza, and the last few slices of cheesecake.

This same time, years previous: curbing the technology addiction, the quotidian (10.22.18), another farm, another job, back in business, a dell-ish ordeal, field work, the reading week, breaking news, silly supper.

My mother discovered a way to stretch her home-canned salsa: scoop some of the canned salsa into a bowl and stir in some plain tomatoes, either fresh or canned (minus the juice).

No one can tell the difference (though if you’re using fresh tomatoes for filler, the salsa tastes fresher), and you get more bang for your buck.

A few weeks back, our family (minus my older son) joined up with a local senior group to go the the National Museum of African American Art and Culture. I’m not a huge museum fan — I don’t like the feeling of “being told,” and I invariably get information overload — but I’d heard great things about this museum. Plus, we had a group to go with, and zero responsibility for transportation and scheduling, so it was too good of an opportunity to pass up.

My younger son stayed with me for most of the day. Together, we sat at the huge lunch counter, clicking through the different menu options to learn about the freedom buses and the sit-ins and the student marches. We walked into red box zones (my son said he’d be okay) and saw the horrific lynching displays — the part that most distressed him was a photo of a smiling white girl, about his age, in one of the mobs. We filed by the coffin of Emmett Louis Till (the display that most impacted my older daughter) and watched a video of Emmett’s mother describing his mangled body.

As we wound our way from underground (the dark, overcrowded belly of the slave ships) and up to the fifth floor with its high ceilings and natural light and riotous celebration of all the many, many African American contributions, I realized that I was not only seeing the history, I was feeling it, too.

But it wasn’t until we were back home and my husband and I were processing the day’s events that I began to fully appreciate the experience: the whole thing had been sobering, yes, but we’d been left, not with feelings of despair, depression, and guilt, but with appreciation and gratefulness, inspiration and hope.

I’m so glad we went.

A couple weeks ago, the girls and I watched Real Women Have Curves. They weren’t too enthused at first, but I’d been wanting to watch it with them for quite some time, so I forced the issue.

They soon got into it (I knew they would), and by the end they were thoroughly enjoying themselves.