Instead of being in school, thousands of school children are sitting at home today, on a holiday we've come to know as Presidents' Day, when in fact, the Federal law designates this holiday as Washington's Birthday. Check this out, from www.opm.gov:
This holiday is designated as "Washington’s Birthday" in section 6103(a) of title 5 of the United States Code, which is the law that specifies holidays for Federal employees. Though other institutions such as state and local governments and private businesses may use other names, it is our policy to always refer to holidays by the names designated in the law.
What? And all this time I've been thinking that we were supposed to be at home, quietly and reverently contemplating the anniversaries of the birth of two of our country's Founding Fathers: George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. I'm sure George and Abe would have wanted the Metro trains to run on a modified (read: fewer trains) schedule and those scary, panic-inducing changing-direction highway lanes we have around here to be something other than what we all expect on a Monday morning.
Well, whatever. The point is, it was a school holiday long before they canceled the Whole Entire World during last week's Snowpocalypse, and people, I pledge that that will be my one and only reference to the weather today.
All this talk about birthdays makes me think of cake! Cake is a funny thing, isn't it? I mean, you can't not have a birthday without a cake. This would be in violation of some cosmic law. To do so would tempt the fates, and not in a good way. No, you gotta have cake. That's just the way it is, forever and ever, Amen.
Yet, it is my observation that while people are in love with the idea of cake, they don't so much enjoy eating it. Cake is ceremonial. When someone starts cutting the cake, everyone demurs. "Oh, just a tiny slice for me, please," Mary says. "Smaller than THAT for me," chimes Beth. That accidentally huge corner piece with all the icing? It immediately gets passed around the room to the largest man present. As if his size requires him to eat more.
This reminds me of one of my favorite scenes from the movie, "Office Space." Having suffered through any number of office birthday parties, it always makes me cringe:
You can't have a wedding without a cake. But honestly, I don't remember too much about the cake at my own wedding. I think it was a marble cake, and there was white frosting with some flowers. It was both pretty and yummy. I also know it was of modest size, and when it went to the kitchen to be cut and served, many guests may have received a piece of sheet cake instead. (Because how would you have known the difference?) After the ceremonial cake cutting, I don't think I ate anything more of it than the bites we exchanged. (And no, we did not smear it into each other's faces. Why, oh why, has that become a wedding tradition?)
This year, I made a really cool cake for Peezer's birthday party. The theme was medieval, so the easiest cake to make was a shield:
The kids all loved looking at it, they couldn't wait to eat it - but not one kid at the party took more than two bites of their piece of cake. I threw most of it away.
And yet, cake can trigger memories.
I remember that every year, my Grandma Losch would ask me what kind of cake she should make me for my birthday. I always chose a red velvet cake, and hers was the best. Oh, and my Aunt Doll (Grandma Losch's daughter, my mom's sister) makes this thing called Grandma Cake, but it probably should be called "rot your teeth and bust yer gut cake" - it's made with brown sugar and butter measured in POUNDS, not fractions of a cup. She always had it when I visited her house, and I enjoyed sharing cake and milk with my Uncle Bill. I have the recipe somewhere and will share it one day soon.
Now it's your turn. What are your cake memories? Or your memories of Washington's birthday, Lincoln's Birthday, or Presidents' Day? Leave 'em in the comments, please.
