Summer Cake

Turn left to the north, and travel up a street filled with large trees whose branches bend and sway heavy with green leaves; those that live there benefit from the shade and air given.  There is a house with strings of white lights intertwined amid the front bushes, a painted porch, and a driveway leading to the back yard where tables had been set with a clatter of ceramic dishes.  So many platters and bowls, filled with early summer vegetables, pastas, olives, fruits, cheeses, and seasoned rice; immense casseroles held layers of spinach, ricotta, and wide, wavy noodles in luscious tomato sauce; a mushroom strudel introduced itself in a tender crust rolled and sealed lovingly.  Wine was released, lemonade iced.

The crowd was happy and appreciative to the couple hosting this beginning summer soiree, clusters of conversation would gather, buzz and break apart again to regroup to the next circle in a slow waltz of interest and commonality.  Heads nodded, deals were made, business reports, opinions, experiences, beliefs, memories, and curiosity spun syllables into an organic, breathing thing created when: people are invited and then shop and gather ingredients and cook and blend and bake and carry, or scurry to the store for a favored vintage, a sweet, a box of plastic utensils and then come together and share with hopes of elevating their friends and neighbors with tidbits and goodwill.  What a nice thing to happen.

I met people that I had a vague connection to in many unseen ways; proximity of work, profession, experience with bureaucracies, friends of friends, I tell you it was amazing.  The hosts were harmonious, splendiferous.  She floated as she does, upon an ether that lifts her maybe a half inch above the ground; she is tethered to earth by her love of nature, including the humanity that swam around her green green yard.  We thought we were full when the announcement was given that dessert was to appear approximately in fifteen minutes.  The work of the host then promenaded forth in sugared layers, built with the eye of an architect, devised by a mind of a mad patissier who understands what is to be done with eggs, flour and chocolate.

I heard an audible gasp from one as a forkful of dark chocolate cake was absorbed; this was met by sighs of joy from those who assisted a carrot cake in disappearance. Both were sumptuous, both were layered by celestial buttercreams or maybe was that a custard?  It was heaven, we thought, oh this could not be better, are we not spoiled, when, knowing the art of timing, the host brought out the lemon curd cake as held by tides of whipped cream, which bonded a nicely crumbed yellow cake, tender yet strong enough to support the weight of the curd and cream piled atop.  No one begged off, we all undertook the  challenge, and finally scraped our plates for last vestiges of lemon essence.  There were bits of a raspberry cheesecake being elevated to minor sainthood, and a favored sourcream cheesecake of the hostess was also quickly coveted and cherished.

At the end, when all good people know to leave, I was given an inside view of the home by my friend, who has a heartfelt guardianship with the ocean.  She dives, snorkels, swims with currents and salinity, brave girl.  There are mermaids, shells, and other things both gentle and fierce throughout the home, and her joy is expressing her kinship with what these artifacts represent.  Tonna galea shells are spread on her mantle, who have a method of dining that includes injecting the sea star prey with a dilute sulfuric acid.  A small, whole coconut in a husk sits on an end table, a brown exclamation point to the myriad treasures captured by pirate she.  It was an honor to see, to share, to be.

The night air had cooled, and I gratefully opened windows after a warm day.  The ballpark near my own home was ablaze with colors and gunpowder, as the evening fireworks commenced war.  The longest daylight of the year will be officially in two days, then time reverses and the days again grow shorter.  We are still here after years of toil and shadowed evenings, to celebrate the light in a summer dance repeats a moment found in many histories of many eras, going back to stone and hill and hedge. So let us have cake and then a night of sleep, dreaming of waves and ocean, of fish and coral beds.  Sleep.