Let him eat cake

Coming from a large family, we didn’t often feel singled out or unique, I’m sure I’m not the only one from a multi-sibling family to feel that way. The one day a year when I wasn’t confused with one of my many sisters was on my birthday. I was allowed to order a birthday meal, cooked from scratch by my mother and no would could complain about it. I could conjure up a strange combination, I remember when the wok was big in the ‘70s and I asked for an all tempura meal. The one thing that never changed was my dessert, strawberry cake, from scratch. Every year, my mother would complain that her strawberry cake, baked for me, would crater or be uneven but I only remember how delicious and unique it was. That tradition remained in my life long after I left home.

On my second date with the man that would become my husband, he asked me if we had any family traditions growing up. I told him about how every year, no matter the food trend, I had a strawberry cake, baked by my mom. He looked startled and then smiled and said he too requested strawberry cake for his birthday every year.

I am not sure I yet believe in kismet but he was determined by our affinity for a certain cake on a certain day that no one else wanted that we were meant to be together.

We’ve shared that story many times over the years and over the years I have lovingly baked him a homemade strawberry cake, and often times it craters or is uneven, but he doesn’t care.

He too, a month later, usually buys me, sometimes fancy, sometimes not, a strawberry cake. He isn’t allowed to cook after he served our (then) nine-year-old dark brown scrambled eggs.

This year was a little different, we’ve “moved” to Gonzales but we don’t have a house, we don’t even have an oven yet in the little kitchen we have in our little rental and with his birthday fast approaching, it looked like this would be the first year I couldn’t keep the strawberry birthday cake tradition going. Our local HEB doesn’t make custom cakes and one of my sweet staff members offered to make one but she works hard enough. I thought we’d have to drive to a big city and find him a strawberry cake Sunday.

But, Friday night at the awesome Rotary Club Dinner “A Knight for the Children” a huge cake festooned with strawberries was wheeled in. I couldn’t believe the luck!

I told my seat mates that I was going to bid on it and proceeded to share the unique strawberry cake story with them. When bidding started, it was clear it was going to be quickly out of my price range, but a seat mate bid on the cake more than once. He ultimately “won” the bid and turned to my husband and said “Happy Birthday.”

I sit here with tears in my eyes typing this story because I am still touched beyond words that someone, who’d only met my husband once felt something that compelled him to be the true definition of generosity and providence. I was certain this would be the first year without a cake and strawberries and grace proved me wrong.

We walked into that dinner thinking “we probably won’t know a soul” as we are still so new to the community and we walked out having seen someone’s soul. The generosity of these Gonzaleans touched our hearts this weekend and brought delight to lots of kids and adults in our community as we shared it with many. To move to a wonderful community and meet extraordinarily kind people almost immediately is akin to having your cake and eating it too.