Having My Cake

When it comes to nature vs. nurture, I’m all about the nature of things. I mean, unless something devastating happens in a kid’s life on the way to adulthood, I believe their personalities are already shaped when they come into this world. There is just so much to be said for genes and chromosomes and how nicely the puzzle pieces fit together to make us who we turn out to be.

For example, my Daddy had a sweet tooth…as in, really sweet. I love sweets, too. Like an addict. One of my favorite words in the English language is “cupcake” – I like the way it sounds coming out of my mouth, and I like the way it tastes going in. Every time my mother sees me eat something sweet (and I mean EVERY time because she’s 84 and repeats herself often), she says, “You love sweets like your Daddy.” So when he was sick with Multiple Myeloma, bone marrow cancer, for six years, he and I bonded on many occasions over some tasty treats.

Many days I’d stop by his house and deliver homemade cookies or brownies. Something little like that would make those long, hard days of battling a disease a little brighter. Holidays brought chocolate pie and my sister’s “cherry stuff” – all of us wondering with each bite if this particular Thanksgiving or Christmas would be his last. At Duke Hospital, we had a ritual. Any time he was admitted (which numbered well into hundreds of times), the first day meant my sister and I had to go down to the cafeteria and bring back some coconut cake. On subsequent days he’d ask for doughnuts or ice cream, but on the first day, he had to have that cake. We did, too.

I can’t count how many of those green chemo bags we watched painstakingly drip, drip, drip.

One time, late in his illness, he was too sick to eat. But in keeping with tradition, I went down to purchase the requisite baked good. I returned to Daddy’s room to find him sleeping. This time my emotions got the better of me, and I stepped out to get myself together. Later, my mother and my sister were there, and we noticed my coconut cake was missing from the plate.

“Who ate my cake?” I asked my sister accusingly. We looked over at the patient who was so weak from cancer treatments he couldn’t respond, but we saw the slightest curve of a grin on his face.

During his last hospital stay, the one that ended, so sadly, when he did, there was a whole cake in the room. Daddy had been admitted on a Friday night, and my birthday fell on that Saturday. Somebody brought a cake. Somebody wrote a birthday message to me on the white board in the room used for announcing the nurse’s names. (Imagine the irony…that someone would use the word “happy” in a situation like that.) It seems I may have received cards, but I can’t remember. My memory failed me after Daddy told his doctors during that visit to stop treating him, that six years was long enough. That place that shuts down your brain when something too devastating to comprehend enters it had been thrown into high gear when I heard the doctor say, “I won’t be able to get you better. You won’t go home.”

The unhappy birthday cake in the room went uneaten.

This year, as in the last eight years, my birthday has come again in close proximity to the date carved on my Daddy’s gravestone. Each year I relive that day in 2004, the day we had a little hospital party, celebrating the day I came into the world while watching my Daddy leaving it.

This year, friends brought me cupcakes, chocolate layer cake, and mousse-filled sheet cake during the week of my birthday. But on this day today, the anniversary of my father’s death, I’ll be looking for some coconut cake. I may even drive to Duke Hospital’s cafeteria to get it.

Here’s to you, Daddy. I inherited many things from you…hair color, eyes, sense of humor…but this one’s my favorite.