It’s birthday time and this poem from 4 years back is the one to post.
Dundee Cake
I made a cake for mum today
a Dundee cake from her
Radiation Cookery Book 1940,
it’s pages stained, parting
from the sombre, dark brown cover.
Nineteen she’d have been,
In that year the Blitz began,
as she read its recipes and guidance
for model housewives.
Did rationing affect her cooking?
Did she stand in line,
wicker basket on her arm,
a headscarf tied, Queen-like,
beneath her chin,
to purchase sugar, butter, eggs?
As they creamed into yellow softness,
not by my hand but in the mixer,
I swear Mum whispered in my ear,
“The water, is it boiled for almond blanching?”
Ah no, I had forgotten.
I was allowed that helping task,
enjoyed the roll of almond in its softened skin,
its play between thumb and index finger,
the satisfying popping out of white nut flesh;
I sometimes finger-licked the cake bowl clean.
Time alone with her was scarce,
came through sewing, she was ever patient,
knitting, when she’d work her needle magic
picking up dropped stitches, making good;
those tables turned a year or so ago.
Growing plants was another of her gifts:
sweet peas twining tall from seed,
their scent heady with summer,
and fruit, currants, red, white and black transformed
into pies and pickles, jams, wine, sometimes cassis.
Who’s going to send me birthday primrose now
garden dug, damp paper wrapped then posted?
Some held a travelling worm or two when opened.
Hand it on, that’s what I’ll do,
send primrose to her spring born grandson.
“I suppose you could,” she whispers, ever understated.
Her independence was that way, untrumpeted;
her money was her own, she always worked,
believed in education, spoke her own political opinion.
She stood by my life choices, even if she disagreed.
So many gifts she freely offered
the last to teach me patient sitting,
expect nothing, just be present sipping tea
while she talked of home, become a fluid place
straddling nine decades and more of life.
How inadequate these words,
thin slivers of love to you who gave me life.
“Don’t you bother about that, you’ve done your best,
that’s all that matters. Is the cake alright?”
“Yes mum, it looks just like one of yours.”
