Another hill.
While falling asleep on the first night of March, I thought about cake. Maybe it was because it's my birthday month? Anyhow, a cake memory came, and then one cake led to another... layers of them, odd slices of stories, some delicious to recall, others heavy with the wrong ingredients.
Yesterday, still thinking about cakes, I painted a blue one, with pink sprinkles.
And then remembered that Maira Kalman, who I greatly admire, once wrote a book about the cakes in her life. It was ordered up from the library, and then the rest of the day was spent listening to all of the recordings I could find of her. Gosh, she's swell.
While listening, stars were stitched. The last one just before dinner. My shoulders and eyes ached from hunching over and focusing on trying to get straight edges on those points. Going along star to star, every so often I'd count to see which star I was on, and then try to imagine Cameron at that age...four, nine, twelve, seventeen, and twenty-six, his last year. Three years older than Blue. At 26 I was working my way out of a dark time... just starting to find myself, a place in the world, beginning to imagine a future. 26.
Another cake this morning. Cakes are like hills. Hills are like cakes.
"Dread and delight at the same time. That is the truth about being alive." Maira Kalman
