My grandmother spent three days making my brother’s wedding cake, only for his bride to laugh when she asked for the money she’d been promised. Grandma needed that money for her medication. So, I slipped something into the couple’s wedding gift that would turn their reception upside down.
Grandma is 73, and baking is how she tells us she loves us.
When Daniel and I were little, he used to pipe crooked blue stars onto her birthday cakes. She never corrected them.
“Leave them, dear. That’s the good part.”
Baking is how she tells us she loves us.
So when Daniel’s fiancée, Ashley, asked Grandma to make a four-tier wedding cake covered in handmade sugar flowers, Grandma was delighted.
Ashley had complained that bakeries wanted over $1,000.
“I’ll pay for the ingredients and your time, of course,” she promised at Sunday lunch.
I heard her say it.
Ashley asked Grandma to make a four-tier wedding cake
Grandma lived on a modest pension, but she bought the supplies herself and spent three days baking and decorating.
When I visited, sugar flowers covered the kitchen table.
She rubbed her aching wrist, then held up a delicate rose for me to admire.
“It’s beautiful,” I told her.
She smiled and went straight back to work.
She spent three days baking and decorating.
I stayed overnight so I could drive her to the wedding outside the city. Ashley was coming for the cake in the morning.
***
I woke up to the smell of coffee and the sound of voices in the front hall.
Ashley had arrived.
She stood by the cake like a customer at a dealership, arms folded, phone out, taking photos. Not one word about how it looked.