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A Daughter’s Memoir: My Mother’s Cake Plate
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I have never been much of a cook, but I love to bake and I have many wonderful memories of baking with my mother as I grew up. Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies were our favorite, but there were honey cakes and butter cookies, linzer tortes, and a terrific Hungarian yeast bread that defies anything I have tasted since. So it’s not surprising that one of my favorite things from my mother after she died was a glass cake plate she used. It was nothing fancy, just elegant, simple lines—but it was one of her favorite things and it became one of mine as well.
In the years after my mother died, I continued to enjoy baking and always used her cake plate whenever I was serving. One day, several years ago, I was invited to a friend’s house for dinner and made a cake, which I brought over, of course, on the cake plate. Since half of the cake remained at the end of the evening, I left the cake plate at my friend’s house, assuming I would get it back later in the week.
The next day, my friend called. Her first words were: “Please tell me that cake plate was not a family heirloom.”
I paused for a moment and replied, “It was my mother’s cake plate. She died twenty years ago and it was one of my favorite things I had from her.” There was dead silence on the phone. And then I added, “But my mother is in my heart and my mind, not in a cake plate.” I said it because the cake plate was obviously broken and it seemed like the only thing to say, yet as soon as I uttered the words, I knew they were true. What I cherished was not the cake plate itself, but the memories of our doing things together.
Over the years, many of my mother’s things have been broken or ruined. The cats have knocked over the Hummel figurines and they have all been glued. The bone china has lost some of its color by being placed in the dishwasher, and most of the tablecloths have become stained after years of holiday use. I know my mother would say, “Don’t worry about it, honey. I’m glad you used and enjoyed them.”
I have thought about the fact that my children will have few objects from the grandmother they never knew. Yet, those “things” couldn’t possibly mean to them what they mean to me. What I miss, and what I would give anything for, is not to have the cake plate back, but to have five minutes with my mother, to feel mothered again. But I don’t need a physical symbol of her, just as I hope my children won’t need a physical symbol of me, to have me with them always.
As I grew up, whenever I read a book I loved, I would ask my mother to read it too, so we could talk about it together. And so, when I was 14, both of us read The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. “On ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux” (It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye),” the fox tells the little prince. We both loved the book. Ten years later, my mother was dead, but forty years later, I still remember the books we shared.
I will always see my mom with my heart; I don’t need a cake plate.
Margit Novack is President of Moving Solutions®, a national move management firm, and of eSMMART, a Web-based training center for individuals who work with older adults. |
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Posted in: Dealing with Grief & Guilt, Inspirational Memoirs, Memoir
I had a doll given to me by my mother. It had been hers as a child and I had kept it for all these years inside of hutch in my dining room. My granddaughter spends every Wednesday with me and about a month ago she asked me why the doll was all the way in the back so no one could see it. So did I take it out to show her? She wasn’t meant to gather dust in the back—and your mother’s cake plate was meant to be used.