Quick post from the road

I think it's morally objectionable to dislike cakes of any sort, though the "somewhat," there, is saving. Mostly, I dislike cake that is gone, although I tend to play a significant role in getting it gone, so "dislike" is probably not quite the right word. "Despair of" is maybe better.

Cake can save your life. Some years back, we had a series of family tragedies. The kind that make you yell out to the universe that it doesn't really need to send you anymore character building experiences, for you are stuffed to the gills and messily overflowing with character, and it wouldn't really be seemly of you to acquire any more. The kind that makes the universe cock an ineffable eyebrow at you, and slam you with still more.

I found myself spending a lot of time in hospitals, which are actually fascinating ecosystems, and might be awesome to ponder and write about, except when someone you love is dying in them, in which case they merely seem like smelly corridors of death. Around Halloween, I actually remember standing in front of the display window of one hospital's gift shop, and being mesmerized by the arrangement I found there, which included cardboard tombstones that read "R.I.P." This, it seemed to me, was a poor rhetorical choice.

But every hospital I lived in had a cafeteria, and each of those cafeterias featured daily selections of cake slices. So I would visit the sick or dying family member, sit for as long as I could stand with the others, talk with doctors-- patiently explain that we really didn't need to give a flying flip about morphine's addictive qualities in the instance at hand, but could simply pump the stuff in until we were absolutely certain pain and fear had no chance against it--and then walk to the cafeteria. A cup of coffee. A diet soda, maybe. And a serving of cake.

This is how I learned that I actually like coconut cake, which I had somehow never managed to try before. Cake was quite literally the one slice of the universe that made sense. If cake could be in it--if it was the kind of world in which people would bake cake, and scrape batter from bowls, and smooth frosting over layers, and serve these concoctions to others--then it would be okay to stay there for awhile.

I do, I will confess, somewhat disapprove of cakes that do not involve buttercream frosting, and though I can live with icings of various sorts, I have trouble really accepting the idea of slathering a perfectly good cake in anything that tastes like Cool Whip. Also, ice cream cakes, I want to point out, are not cakes at all, and should cease and desist from pretending to be. They are fine, but they are not cake.