Sunday Dinner: Hilda and the Magic Cake

There are always some defining moments of our lives. Some more important moments than others. Magic Cake... Magic Cake isn't just about cake, but it's about a life lesson about secrets, really, and sometimes how those secrets are best kept just that. Secret.

Everyone has asked me to explain the title of this blog, so I thought I'd introduce you to my great aunt Hilda Anna Rowena Deevers (that's her on the right) and her mother, my great grandma, Mamie Hett Deevers...  aka Grandma Deevers.  Grandma Deevers was a remarkable woman herself, and she raised four daughters as a widow through the great depression (more on that another day).  Her daughters: Hilda, Cleo, Trinette and my own grandma, Mary, were all an integral part of my growing up.

I was spectacularly blessed to have known all of these remarkable women for a very long portion of my life. Grandma Deevers passed away when I was 22 - and she was just a few months shy of her 98th birthday, and Hilda passed away in 2011, at the age of 98.  My aunt Trinette passed away in the early 1990's, and my own grandma passed away 11 years ago now. My great aunt Cleo is the last of these lovely ladies, now in her 90's, and she is a hoot, and several posts all to herself! This longevity and these relationships are probably a goodly portion of why I am so fond of senior citizens today.

Aunt Hilda was responsible for the "Magic Cake" portion of this blog.  I'll tell about the "Lima Beans" portion another day, but about that cake... 

Although they lived several hours north of me, we made frequent trips "home" to visit the family - which included my grandma and grandpa (my father's parents) and Grandma Deevers and Hilda (Hilda never married, and lived at home with her mother her whole life). Cleo lived in New Orleans back then, and Trinette was in Illinois.   On Sundays we went to Grandma Deever's house for lunch (or, as my family calls it "Sunday Dinner"). 

Sunday was a comforting ritual. Grandpa went to church. Dad and mom slept in and my brother and I would get up and watch cartoons or whatever while grandma made us breakfast - eggs and bacon. Gravy and biscuits. Along about noon we would all hop in the car and drive across town to Grandma Deever's house. (This took about 7 minutes... it's a small town).  Grandpa would be there already, sitting in the chair reading the paper and listening to the cardinals baseball game. The house was always very aromatic as dinner was all but done by then. Grandma Deevers and Hilda would be putting finishing touches on our lunch. When we were very small, mom would read us books, or take us outside to run around and explore.  Sometimes we got to go into the back garden with Hilda and pick tomatoes to go with dinner, or some other goodies for the salads. From the time I could reach, it was my job to mash the potatoes for dinner. I had a little stool that I stood on to get to the top of the counter. Hilda would drain the boiled potatoes and pour the milk and add the butter, and get it started for me, and then I would stand there and smoosh and smoosh and smoosh potatoes as hard as I could with the hand masher.  It was quite a workout but I loved my little job. Hilda would come by now and then to check my progress, add a dash of salt or a tad of milk, and check on my lumps.  During dinner my grandpa would always tell me how my potatoes rated that week.  Lumpy ("Better eat some more wheaties, Tish!") or sometimes I had to confess to having some extra help when Hilda mashed them a bit more for me and they were smoother. 

Meals were always quite structured for our little German family. Sunday dinners always had a small salad, a meat, a potato (baked or mashed - almost always mashed at Grandma Deevers house), a fresh vegetable, always a plate of sandwich bread with butter on the table, a plate of pickles, and always a dessert. Like most folks, growing up we didn't get dessert all the time at home. It was hit or miss and that was a-ok. It was just normal. Sometimes there was a goodie. Sometimes there wasn't.  But at Grandma Deevers and Hilda's house for Sunday dinner that was always something we could count on. There was ***always*** dessert - which made my brother and me quite happy, naturally. It was always a big deal for us kids sitting at the table practically bouncing with excitement waiting to see what sort of goodie that Hilda had made just for us.

My favorite was what I called the Magic Cake.  Or, at least I called it that to myself. In hindsight I don't guess I ever told anyone else my name for it until I was a good deal older. It was a scrumptious white cake with spectacular tiny bursts of color in it.  Red. Blue. Green. Yellow.  Nobody else I knew had ever made that kind of cake - ever - and as I started learning to cook, and made cakes myself, I was amazed even more at how she got those colors in there. (I started cooking simple dinners for my family when I was in 7th grade.)

I saw less and less of them over time and I guess I'm the only one who noticed because after quite some time with no Magic Cake, one day when I was probably a teenager I was visiting and I asked Hilda what was for dessert that day in anticipation of finally having magic cake again. I don't really even remember what she said we were having, but I do remember my disappointment when it wasn't magic cake so I asked her how come she never made the Magic Cake anymore.

She looked at me kind of funny and said "What magic cake, Tish?"

"You know, the one with all the pretty colored polka dot thingies inside it!!"

Folks. This is the day my bubble burst. This was the day I learned that sometimes... sometimes it's just best not to find out the secrets of life.

Hilda looked at me and said "Why that's just an ole white box cake with some sprinkles inside it, Tish!!!"

:-|

Wha?  Wait... Wha?!!!

I know all of my readers saw that one coming from a mile away but back then... back then that was a game changer for me.  Literally no one I knew had ever made that cake but Hilda. I'd spent my whole life believing it, and she, were quite literally magic.

Marcia Alice

I do not have a head for "dates" and "events."  There are few days of my life that, without referencing a diary or calendar or my brother whose capacity to remember dates is amazing, that I could tell you exactly what I was up to that don't involve a major holiday. While reading all of the beautiful and heartfelt posts about mothers on OGFBF (a Facebook group that is a collective of creative souls that I am blessed to be a part of),  I realized that today is April 7th - the day we moved my mom into an independent living facility in 1997. 

Marcia Alice Kirtley Brockmire

My mother lived a colorful life, much of which I didn't learn until after she passed away, as often is the case with children, and all of which makes for some interesting storytelling (more on that another time). My heart often hurts for the cards my mom got dealt in life, but I like to believe that much of her life was filled with happy times and that it was all "worth it" for her. She never, ever complained. In hind-sight I recognize that she was quite protective of myself and my brother, and I know that she loved my brother and me with her whole heart, as we do her.

Mom was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis when I was in high school, (early 1980's) and the doctors believed that she had likely had MS since the early-to-mid 1970's and had just not been diagnosed. She and my father got divorced shortly after I left high school and she lived on her own in an apartment in downtown Memphis for several years, not without incident, until she moved in with her then boyfriend who looked exactly like what your brain conjures up when I say the words "biker dude.". (Don't judge just yet. Harry was a wonderful man).   

In 1997, my mom was was 52 years old - just 6 years older than I am today, when we moved her into the independent towers of a facility to help care for her. I cannot help but wonder what she was thinking after we walked out of the door of her private apartment that first night. Did she cry? Was she sad? Lonely? While I remember the date and the event, I had so much going on, and was heaped so much more responsibility that I was struggling through my own that today I do not remember... did I ask her? I'd like to think I did. I spoke with her daily, often half a dozen times a day. Funny how the mind doesn't remember some things. 

I was in my early 20's, just graduated from college but a few years when my responsibilities for my mom took over my world, and at 29 I felt both like a baby ill-equipped to handle the responsibility, and old before my time, caring for a parent i considered so young. Growing up we expect to care for babies, not parents, in our 20's and 30's. There is no guidebook. No "how-to" manual. And I know I made many mistakes.  All of these posts about moms on OGFBF, they are just so sweet. They make my heart ache for my own mom, and, more often than not, that coincides with an ache for maybe a smidge more of a conventional family life, which, I suppose, means that I wished that things had gone differently for us all. 

Today, however, I am melancholy, and I just wanted to introduce her, and share with you all the last photo taken of her that I share publicly.  My mother was a bit of a model growing up, and I know that she would not be pleased if I allowed the world to see her in decline from MS. I would have to look up the date, but I believe that this photo of my mother was taken when she was pretty close to the age I am today. 46. She looked much better at 46 than I do, and, more important, you can see so well the beautiful soul that she was in this photo.

Miss you mama!

Magic Cake and Lima Beans

Growing up, my life was full of love and family, as most any normal child's should be.  My family wasn't wealthy, but we always had "enough" - and extra when it came to the giggles of life. I remember as a very small girl, standing and watching my daddy (an artist) painting at his "big desk."  I remember my mom walking to the back yard with me to give a proper burial to my fish who died, because that's what we do with dead loved ones... we bury them. (we do NOT flush them!).  

My family life was filled with Magic Cake and Lima Beans,  Mashed Potatoes and Worms and the best green bicycle ever. Late night neighborhood games of kick the can. My BFF who lived across the street. Summers spent avoiding the rotten plums on the ground in my BFF's yard, while we picked through them looking for summer treats that were safe to eat while swinging on her swing set. Before the zombie apocalypse, we had the Oshkanoggins. When I was very young I saw the original black and white version of King Kong in the movie theater, and cried all the way home when they killed him, and have never watched it again. 

Welcome. I hope you like cake and beans!