Southern Legitimacy Statement: Well, I was born in Mobile Alabama and raised in Kerrville Texas. My Dad rooted for that durn Alabama football team til the day he died. I’m Southern by god. In bios I open with, “Marie Chambers is a Southerner by birth and an Angelino by choice.” All other inclusions pale in comparison to that sentence.
White is Overrated OR Cake Matters
At my sister’s first wedding, the whole thing was plotted by caterer-planners beloved only by the Kerrville First Presbyterian Church. Especially the wedding cake. Three tiered and white, it was vanilla flavored with vanilla icing bedecked with vanilla butter crème roses arranged predictably around the edges of each iced (white) layer. Decorative roses with not a breath of color. Just wrong.
As the newlyweds had invested their attention on a post post-ceremony, mid-summer, big-ass, nobody watching us sort of brawl back at their deluxe wide trailer, the reception venue became the church Fellowship Hall. This was where the wedding cake lived and where we all marched after the happy couple had exchanged vows and exited to the pastor’s study to catch their breath. My sister and her new husband utilized this pause to sample some very excellent weed they’d grown and held back for occasions such as this.
The Fellowship Hall featured lots of white – clumps of tables swathed in no color tablecloths with some white netting. There were grey metal folding chairs for the infirm or the weary. Floral arrangements featured at least a touch of pink. Plus a dizzyingly thick layer of baby’s breath. Folks clad in pastel circled the punch bowl, looking very much like good shepherds in search of lost lambs. They pocketed (white) bags of (white) rice in preparation of the bon-voyage-young-lovers toss and asked each other how much longer they thought it might be ‘til the bride and groom appeared.
Amidst the crowd, my parents stood up straighter than usual. They were tirelessly pleasant but they both had a sort of pinched look about the mouth. As if there were some words that should have been released earlier but were now trapped in their jaws forever.
So I began to – chatter, chatter, big laugh little laugh, isn’t it swell that people marry? – work the room.
Though he returned promptly, my brother scurried offsite to procure a beer.
Eventually the bride and groom appeared, both wearing white and both completely brilliantly stoned. They hurried to the cake, hacked into it, fed each other, surrendered the cake-knife to me, then waved to the crowd and fled the scene. I dug my fingers into that icing, scooped up a rose and sucked it down. The dreariest cake ever. This taste felt criminal.
Two years later, also in August, Miriam arrived at my parents’ doorstep with her infant daughter in one arm and a bag of baby necessities in the other. She asked to come home. Miriam reports my parents didn’t ask questions. They hugged her, cooed over the baby and proceeded to set up the back bedroom.
Seven years later, on New Year’s Eve, for my sister’s second wedding, I made the cake(s): a sugar-choked German Chocolate cake and a lip-smackingly lemony cake. No reception. Ten attendees. Miriam wearing a fitted dress in bright stained-glass-window colors marrying a man who loved her better than any window in Christendom. We all drank champagne.
Cake matters. As does love.
