You name it. She can ice it.
Growing up, my classmates’ parents would order birthday cakes, which I enjoyed at the parties. She made many of my friends’ wedding cakes, which I enjoyed at the receptions. And, she’s made a number of my friends’ baby shower cakes, which I enjoyed over diaper genies and piles of bows.
People certainly ordered vanilla cakes with white icing. Sometimes she’d get an order for carrot cake, or a random cheesecake here and there. But mostly, people wanted chocolate cake.
My sister, especially, loves chocolate cake. And because my sister is a quiet and subtle person, my mother makes a chocolate cake for every family get together because it so visibly excites my generally calm sister. My sister’s wedding cake was seven tiers of chocolate cake iced in chocolate. At the time, it had never been done. Not even by Martha Stewart. But my mother suggested the idea to my sister because chocolate cake is her favorite.
It’s everyone’s favorite.
Last week, while grocery shopping, I passed by a display of freshly made angel food cake. Rarely am I one to bend impulsively to grocery store displays, but the sponge cake caught my eye and I went for it.
After dinner that night I felt a profound excitement in dishing up pieces of this delight, with fresh strawberries sliding down the spongy slopes. I couldn’t believe how good the cake was. Tangy, soft, sweet. Had my mother ever made us angel food cake? Then again, why would she when chocolate was what we all preferred.
After the kids were put to bed and the dishes were done, I asked Jim how he liked the dessert. He shrugged and said, “It was good.”
“What?” I pressed. “You didn’t like it?”
“Oh,” he said, bringing me in for a proactive hug. “Angel food cake is not my favorite.”
“I didn’t know you hated sponge cake,” I said, pulling away.
“I don’t hate it. It’s just not my favorite,” he smiled. “You know, the way you don’t really care for chocolate cake.”
I stepped back. “I love chocolate cake! It’s my favorite.”
“No it isn’t,” he laughed.
“How can you say that? I love chocolate cake!”
“Then how come at every kid’s party we go to you always pick the vanilla over the chocolate?”
“Because…” I said firmly, “I want to leave the chocolate for the kids.”
“Our wedding cake was spice.”
“It was fall! That was a classy move!”
“Every year when your mom calls to ask what flavor of birthday cake you want, you have never once said chocolate.”
“But that’s just because my birthday is in August,” I replied weakly. “Summer birthdays scream lemon.”
“Or,” he smiled, “You don’t like chocolate cake.”
Sometimes it just takes a while to recognize your own preferences.
For the past four years, the single thing I have craved the most is time away. And I just mean the time away I spend for a few minutes in the bathroom. Or on my drive to work. Sleeping in on a Saturday. Grocery shopping alone. These small bits of time help balance out the large blocks of chaos.
This isn’t because I don’t like my life or all its chaos. It’s just that it is chaotic. Two small children, two hectic jobs, a house, a yard, a puppy. While individually these aspects are delightful, together they make for a swirling vortex of calamity.
So the thought of getting away for the weekend is the stuff dreams are made of. A couple of months ago, Jim and I went away for a few nights to celebrate our wedding anniversary. Every year we book a cozy hotel room somewhere a short drive from my parents’ home so we can be close by if the kids need us.
It’s not that we couldn’t get on a plane and travel to some exotic beach for a few days—my parents wouldn’t notice the difference—but I’ve found that if we stay somewhere close, I somehow feel less anxious.
Traveling without our children takes an extreme amount of work. It all starts with coordinating calendars with my parents, who have decided that at the age of retirement, they will actually work harder and volunteer for more activities. When the schedules are coordinated, laundry is next. Assuming my children will stay for two nights with my parents, I’ll need to pack each child with two sets of clothes, one set of pjs, back up clothes, back up pjs, diapers, wipes, snacks, hairbrush, toothbrushes, toothpaste, a stack of books, a few stuffed animals for each child, and an assortment of every imaginable children’s medicine.
Once the children are packed I can then run laundry for all the clothes Jim and I will need. And start the packing process all over again.
Then comes the day of departure. This is intense because everyone needs to be up and out the door at a certain time if Jim and I want to be able to drop the kids off, explain to our parents how exactly you care for and nurture children, and get to the hotel in time for check in, and to the bar in time for happy hour.
For this to happen I need to wake up before dawn and quietly shower and get dressed before anyone else in the house begins to stir. From there, I scour the house, making sure the thermostat is set to the right temperature, the dishwasher is unloaded, and clutter is picked up enough so that I’m not stressed by the mess after the exhaustion of travel.
And once we finally get everyone’s bags and bodies loaded into the car, we are usually well over an hour late to my parents’ house, at which point we will need to take the car seats out of our car and wrestle them into theirs.
After the car seats are in, the kids’ bags are in the guest bedroom, the sheet of paper with important phone numbers is left on the kitchen counter, and the goodbyes have been said to the children, I always have to say something to my mother which makes me feel both powerful and weak:
“These girls are my heart. Don’t let anything happen to them.”
It’s not that I don’t trust my parents implicitly—I do. It’s that leaving my children is the most complicated emotion I ever feel. I’m desperate for a break, for isolation, for a bathroom door that locks. And yet, the act of leaving them, the few minutes I take with my mother to remind her how much I love them, grips my heart in a confusing way.
I’m having the conversation with her because I need to leave. And yet the conversation is making me think I may not want to.
The moment we leave the girls—them waving at us happily from my parents’ window—I see Jim’s body relax and his eyebrows lift in happiness. He knows the car seats were installed properly, and he trusts I packed them all the essentials. Jim is by far the more anxious and overprotective parent when we are home with the girls, so he truly relaxes on the rare occasions when we get away together.
I, on the other hand, suddenly feel anxious in a way that is different from my daily life with two young kids. I squirm in my seat, wondering if London’s eye looked goopy. But I remind myself I packed drops. I worry about the comment my mother made about taking them to ride horses. Certainly they will put helmets on the girls...I resist texting any anxiety-fueled questions because I know I can casually slip some in when I check to make sure bath time went okay.
Jim talks about where we should go for dinner while I struggle to remember if I told my mom about the ritual of cheek kisses I do with the girls before bed. Jim turns up the radio and sways to the music while I mentally check through the number of electrical sockets in my parents’ living room.
Eventually I am able to calm my nerves, to squelch the anxiety I had about my parents wanting to take them down to the creek behind their property (they had life jackets, right?) and begin to truly enjoy my time alone with my husband.
On our recent trip, we walked around the quaint little square of the sleepy town in which we were staying. We ate extended meals together without our conversations being interrupted. We ordered exotic foods our preschooler would never allow on the table. We laughed a lot. We drank too much. We felt ourselves unwinding from the stresses of our everyday, modern life.
And then, the last morning of our trip, we walked down to a tiny little coffee shop for breakfast. A true hotspot for the locals meant we had to stand in a long line around the building until a table was open. But we didn’t care. We had all the time in the world to wait, and eat, and talk.
But as we watched passersby on the cobblestone street, I heard a very faint, though incredibly familiar, sound.
A tantrum.
It grew louder and louder until we saw the source coming toward us, kicking and screaming from behind the straps of a stroller. And behind the wailing child were her two parents, who looked tired and frustrated and unkempt—desperately trying to enjoy their getaway. We watched as they walked by, trying unsuccessfully to complete sentences to each other while also trying to calm their preschooler.
As they walked farther away, the deafening screams getting fainter again, I felt something deep in my gut. A pang.
What was it?
Before I had time to figure it out, our name was called and we sat down for a long leisurely brunch filled with coffee and meandering, delightful conversation.
After breakfast, still feeling a little off, we got in our car to leave for my parents’ and pick up the girls.
“Why are you so quiet?” Jim asked, his face still serene.
“Something is bugging me,” I said.
“Oh? What?”
“I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it.”
“You had a good time, yes?”
“The best! I needed this.”
“So? Did something upset you this morning?”
“I dunno…” I thought. “I guess when we were waiting on breakfast. And that family with the screaming kid walked by.”
“Well that upset everybody,” Jim said with a laugh.
“But it didn’t upset me,” I said. “I mean, it did, but it didn’t.”
“Not sure I follow.”
“I think I was…” I paused and looked out the window. “Jealous of her.”
“Of that mother? No need for that. Our girls’ fits are far more impressive.”
“No…” I laughed. “I mean, I was jealous of her anxiety.”
“Meaning….?” he asked, turning down the radio.
“I guess it just hit me that I’d prefer the anxieties of our everyday life with the girls…” I paused. “Than the anxiety I feel when I’m without them.”
It was a truth that surprised me. The solution to my anxiety is not escaping it—it can’t be done. The solution is understanding I have a choice regarding which anxiety to embrace.
Just like my childhood filled with chocolate cake. I don’t hate chocolate cake. I actually kinda like it. Sometimes. It’s just not my first choice. But growing up, I guess I thought chocolate was the only choice.
I failed to realize there were options.
And with parenting, I think I believed that feeling anxious, overwhelmed and tired was the only flavor of parenting.
But as the years have gone by my palate has become a bit more refined. I can tell the differences between the mild anxiety of being at home and managing my children, versus the mild anxiety of being away and worrying about my children.
Two very distinct flavors, and I realize, only now, I have a preference.
Jim and I came back from our anniversary getaway rested and relaxed and overjoyed to see our girls. But as the chaos of life picked back up and the serenity of our short getaway fades, we find ourselves planning another vacation. Something for after all the holiday chaos subsides. We huddled together in front of the computer trying to choose a destination. Once that was decided we searched around for a hotel. Then some activities to do in the area.
“Well that only leaves one more detail,” Jim said. “Do we go by ourselves or take the kids? I leave it up to you to decide.”
To which I responded:
“Piece of cake.”
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