The Cake That Turned the Tide

I was just visiting my friend Heather. She is 34 and an absolute beauty. Our families have known each other for a long time. Over the years, my kids lived with her family and hers with mine. Heather is a Douala in a hospital midwife group in Portland, Oregon. I can't get enough of her birthing stories. They are so different from the days when I attended home births in New Hampshire. Epidurals and fetal monitors have changed the process so much. I used to watch the birth channel on cable TV until it got so boring watching the women lie around bored while laboring with little or no feeling from the waist down.

I am not against feeling no pain, my working theory of exercise is "No pain, no pain." as opposed to "No pain, no gain." I guess I just can't relate that much. However,I think the birthing women are very lucky to have knowledgeable, attentive care throughout their labor. And each and ever threshold story is still magical to me.

A friend of Heathers dropped by and asked how we got to know each other. Heather thought a while. Her memory went to a pivotal moment in our lives. I had owned a New Age Bookstore, Christine Masters New Age Bookstore, named after a character I had written about a few years previously. Heather's mom, Shelley wandered into the store. We became friends. Shelley was a macrobiotic cook as well as a follower of Guru Maharji and a single mother of three gorgeous kids. We walked around Marblehead Neck almost daily.

Shelley was not feeling well, but she was working very diligently to get healthy. Heather and I can't remember when it was that she found out that she had a malignant tumor inside her spinal column. I am not certain that I knew about this at the time. Shelly was losing weight  and it was no wonder. As she got sicker, she was purifying her diet until it basically consisted of brown rice and miso soup. (That's my memory.) We were walking a lot because that felt good to her. Sometime during that process, Shelley connected with Catherine Sears in a neighboring town.

Catherine was a healer who used crystals and energy for her work as well as her own psychic powers. She was very expensive for our budgets. Very. But she was a strong, clear woman and Shelley put her faith in her. She told Shelley that she had cancer because of old anger and resentments and had to work to clear this and she would be healed.

Soon, I had to drive Shelley to these appointments. She was getting weaker and thinner and the tumor was making her less able to walk or move. It was cutting off the nerves to the bottom half of her body. Catherine kept telling her that the tumor was shrinking and things were better. I got so I was totally angry at Catherine because in her weakened state, Shelley was in her thrall. Our lives were getting pretty sketchy. I had three kids and a small business to run and Shelley's kids needed attention.

One bad day, (pain, not able to eat) I called the kids together and said I needed to call Shelley's parents. She weighed about 84 pounds and looked like death to me. I asked the kids if they knew the names of the grandparents and their faces brightened up and when they replied "Mopsey and Papa." Oh shit, that wasn't much help. I finally found Peter, the kid's dad, and he knew the contact info. Of course, the parents were cruising in the Bahamas on their sailboat. Through a series of miracles, we contacted them, they were able to charter a plane or helicopter or something and got to Marblehead late that night. Shelley was too out of it to protest. The next morning she was having a nine hour operation with the amazing Dr. Fang at Mass General. He was able to get the entire tumor out without releasing any cells and I had the care of the kids.

When Shell got home from the hospital, she was skinny and weak, but cured of cancer. She still would not eat anything that wasn't macrobiotic and then only tiny bits. Anyone could see that she needed more. Heather told me that Shelley used to love carrot cake. We went up to her room and asked her whether she would eat some carrot cake if we made one. She said that she would if it was vegan. I said I had the perfect recipe.

Heather and I made a plan. We made a carrot cake as rich and nourishing and loaded with calories as humanly possible. We used a dozen eggs, a half of a pound of butter, tons of walnuts, piles of carrots, two cups of maple syrup, whole wheat flour, cream cheese frosting with honey and the juice of many lemons. The thing weighed about 8 pounds. Heather was so afraid that her mother would find out that she took the egg shells to a neighbors house to get ride of them. I took the cream cheese packaging home.

Shelley ate the whole thing over the next few days. It was the starting point of her regaining her strength and her appetite. For years she talked about the cake and wanted the recipe. She bragged about how the tofu frosting tasted just like cream cheese and the cake was as rich as if it were loaded with eggs and butter. I never blabbed. Heather told Shell the truth about the amazing cake about 8 years later.

I taught the child the dubious lesson that sometimes you have to twist the truth a little bit for righteous outcomes. It really was the most amazing cake ever and I am so not famous for my cooking.