Friday, August 12, 2016

This Takes the Cake!


Last year I opened Belledame Publishing, Inc. (www.belledamesunlimited.com/Publishing.html) to proliferate books and cards that pay homage to people with challenges, particularly third stage women like me. This company is a one-woman operation, built on a lifetime of art and ideas I stashed in closets both physical and metaphorical for the last fifty years. So far I have published two books: one philosophy called The Bridge: Using Symbols to Build Your Life and a colorbook titled Dragons for Dames. Soon I will have a set of dragon greeting cards available to color as well, and the process of constructing those has made me ponder what other kinds of greeting cards I want to make. Congratulations on getting out of the hospital? Retire while you still can? Certainly, birthdays become increasingly important even as their messages becomes more unwieldy. Still here? YET another year?

I could use a whole lot of birthday cakes, rows and rows of them for cover front and back. And, since I bake a personalized cake every time a family member clicks off another year, and more for friends, I am sure I have digital pictures for the last ten years at least and prints I could dig out for all the years before that. I began to wonder just how many cakes I have baked in my life. Could I even fit them all onto one card? Would I want to? How tiny would they have to print?

There are eight of us now - that is seven birthday cakes (I don't have to bake my own) for the last ten years (since young Gabriel was born) equals seventy cakes. I did miss a couple, people out of town and such, but this has been very consistent, so let's say sixty-five. And I have made friend cakes at least twice a year for those ten years, for another twenty. That's eighty-five. The two years before Gabe, there were seven of us, so six cakes for two years equals another twelve to add up to a ninety-seven since Emma was born, plus a few for friends, say one hundred.  For two years before Emma, we were six, so five each year is another ten to add up to a hundred-and-ten plus a couple friends, say one-hundred-and-twelve. Before my own two kids were married, life was more scattered and inconsistent, one of them on the west coast for five years, so let's say I only baked thirteen during those maybe eight years: one-hundred-and-twenty-five. I am not going to try to count when they were home and growing up because who can remember, but I know sometimes I bought for a crowd of kids, sometimes I baked. I will just call that Plus.

Damn. I have baked and decorated one-hundred-and-twenty-five-Plus birthday cakes, probably like a whole lot of other belledames with family. I will find as many pictures as I can and crowd them front and back on the most personal birthday card I could ever devise, a lifetime of party-making from me to you. Happy Birthday, Ladies:)


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