Rocket Ship cake

This morning, for the twentieth time, I pulled out the recipe torn from a Vegetarian Times magazine all the way back in September 1993.

Today, for the twentieth year in a row, I’m baking the Rocket Ship Cake, the cake that received so much grief from magazine readers the following month, writing in to complain, sure, it’s dairy- and egg-free, but four cups of sugar? Five cups of white flour? To which I hope the editors responded, Yeah, it’s a cake. 

Only the best cake ever.

That September 1993 issue appeared at just the right time. My son’s 6th birthday was coming up, and we were vegan, so a whole kids’ party feature, including cake, was perfect. In those days, the kid was at the French school, where our diet and scholarship-status placed us distinctly in the minority.

A Rocket Ship cake would make the party.

That first year, we went for it, cutting the two big layers and laying them out in a rocket ship shape on a tinfoil-covered cutting board, adding licorice and candy garnishes just like in the magazine. The cake turned out great, though sadly, no photos were taken.

The next year, Birthday #7, we had the same cake, but now cut into a turtle shape, covered with white icing, green sprinkles for the shell, its smiling head and four feet decorated with candy. By then, we’d moved from the French school to Waldorf, so all those boys were there, in addition to my sisters and our own friends. We had a full house, a full day of revelry, games, crafts, a pinata.

And so it went for all of his childhood parties.

Always the Rocket Ship cake.

Now, naturally, the observance of my son’s birthday is a bit more low-key. I’m bringing the cake to dinner at his grandparents’ tonight, a week ahead of his birthday proper. It’ll be a small gathering, but since we won’t see him on the date, we’re kicking the celebration off early.

Anyway, this month is always a month of memories for me, of big nostalgia remembering his birth and babyhood, all those years we were inseparable.

The year of the Turtle Cake, he’s 7 and missing some teeth, wearing a white sailor hat and a t-shirt from his favorite summer camp. He has a buzz, thanks to lice, as do all the Waldorf boys in attendance. His jeans are baggy on his little legs. In one picture, he’s blindfolded and grinning, my middle sister about to spin him around before he takes his swings at the pinata which we’ve got strung up in the plum tree, continuing a family tradition. When my sisters and I were little, our father did the same for us, except since we grew up in the city, he’d rig the pinata up somehow in the hallway, through some ingenious system of his own device that employed the banister, a hanger and some rope. My sisters and I would take our turns, gingerly so as not to smash the walls. Our friends had no such compunctions. Nor did my son at this party, a line of boys eager for their turn stretched out behind him. Plenty of room to swing.

I’m sure my sisters came early that day, to help. In that same photo, I can see my youngest sister in the background animatedly speaking, her long hair glowing in the sunlight. It’s so hard to believe that she’s gone, you know, that this November marks 7 months since she died. She was already sick in this photo, at my son’s 7th birthday, though you’d never know it. In fact, most people didn’t know it, since we were strictly prohibited from speaking about the HIV she’d contracted around two years before. Such a weird thing how long we kept that secret for her. But I digress.

And this is how it goes for me in November, this month of memories. I pull out the recipe, I pull out the photo albums, I reminisce, I wander around, I re-live.

Later tonight there will be cake. There will be candles, and singing, and there will be cake. Every bite I take, every mouthful will be sweet with sugar and sweet with memory, so many years of this same tradition, so many celebrations of the life of this person I helped make, grown up into such a fine human being.

It'll be so sweet.

XX