The Wedding Cake

on mothers | daughters | destruction

This is my first post for paid subscribers only, so I wanted to make it a juicy one. One of those sideways wedding day moments where you get to choose whether to laugh or cry (photographic evidence provided, tell me which you’d have chosen) and later, much later, you figure out what it all really meant.

You couldn’t call the cake the beginning of anything. Nor an end. It was more of a punctuation mark, or a word underlined three times for emphasis. It was a sign saying start paying attention, dummy.

I was a reluctant wedding planner. I didn’t want to try on dresses or buy matching nightgowns for the bridal party with names embroidered in looping cursive on the back. I didn’t want to decide where each of our friends would sit or what colour napkins they would lay across their lap. I couldn’t imagine standing, knife in hand, to slice into a teetering tower of sponge and icing while everyone looked on, bored most probably. I didn’t want to cause a fuss.

I should be clear — this isn’t a story of benign resistance concealing deep-seated second thoughts. Yes, I was dreading being seen on our wedding day, but not by the man I was marrying. M is the person who saw the walls I built – around napkins and dresses and cakes and veils – and laid his hands on each one, palms to the sky, waiting for me to reach out, pull myself over the top.

No, this really is a story about a cake. A little about a dress. And a lot about my mother, I suppose.