For as long as I can remember, my mom’s kitchen has been filled with the delicious smell of Rum cake throughout the month of December. She has always baked and baked all month long. We took cakes to our teachers who looked forward to the cake year after year. Everyone knew about Sheila’s rum cake. I have always loved eating it for breakfast, lunch, dinner or just because I walked by and thought I needed another bite. But, I never truly appreciated the labor of loved involved in this baking tradition.
There were 3 of us with teachers to bake cakes for plus my dad’s customers who grew accustomed to receiving the delectable gift each year. We all three were involved in every club, sport, and church activity imaginable. Mom worked full time and always managed to get us where we were supposed to be. She was involved at church and always volunteered at our schools. STILL she baked tons of cakes every December! As a side note, this is where everyone who knows me now lets out a collective, “Oh, now I see why she thinks she has to do everything and seem to do it with ease!”
So, this is the year I am finally carrying on the tradition. Jake started kindergarten this year and I felt the need to make something for his teachers and couldn’t imagine making anything but my mom’s rum cake. I have had the best intentions all week of getting it done but alas, it is 10:38pm the night before I need to take them to school and I just now have my first 2 cakes in the oven. I am genuinely perplexed at how in the heck she did it year after year? Between getting everyone to and from school each day, diffusing the ever present potential time bomb that is Will, and stopping whatever I am doing every 3 hours to feed Maddie May, I can hardly find time to do the normal things that need to happen to keep my house from collapsing around me much less bake cakes. This week alone, we were at church for 8 hours on Sunday, we had a 2 hour delay from school Monday for FOG (I know, astounding), Maddie May had a doctor’s appointment complete with shots and Will being traumatized by watching, Jeff’s company Christmas party in Greensboro, my church staff lunch, tomorrow night we get to go to Courtney’s nursing graduation (yippee for her!), and I had my normal work of getting stuff together for Sunday night youth, going to Wed night bible study, and planning both Winter retreats. Did I mention I also have 4 full baskets of folded laundry upstairs that I need to put away? And I only work part time – mom worked full time!
So, I am typing between cakes, being grateful that God gave me the baking gene (poor Courtney did not get it) and thinking, I should have helped mom a little more back then because even now, when I asked her for the recipe, she practically insisted that I let her do it for me because she knows I have too much to do. The woman has something like 50 cakes to bake this week alone and she still works full time and has Will spending the night with her tonight, but she wanted to bake them for me! She is a saint.
No, I am baking them myself. It is a right of passage that I need to figure out because if she could do it so can I. Tomorrow, I will pop Maddie May into her sling, tote these loaves of buttery, nutty, did I mention rum soaked goodness into school where I get to be a mom in class for Polar Express day while Will spends the morning with Pop. I’ll probably barely make it on time, will likely not get a shower before hand, but I’ll waltz in there like it is nothing and continue my act that I have it all together and this whole mom extraordinaire thing is really nothing. But, if you have any children at all, much less 3 or more, you know I am nothing more that a good actress who loves my kids and wants more than anything to be as good of a mom and mine is. My life would not exist as I know it without her. Thanks mom for making me a better person, for teaching me the importance of doing for your kids, for honestly believing you invented being a grandma and for the gift of baking. My kitchen smells delicious now…
