Baking will be missed on mom's birthday

I shouldn’t be sitting here writing this column. I should be baking a cake. I should be making snickerdoodle cookies. I should be signing a card I bought days ago. I should be wrapping a present consisting of something that hadn’t been made in years but that I had somehow found after weeks of panicked searching. There are so many things I should be doing, none of which I will ever do again.
My mom’s birthday is this Wednesday. And there is no point in celebrating it. I doubt if the cemetery people would appreciate it if I left cake and cookies on her grave. The squirrels, birds and other wildlife might like it but it still wouldn’t be a good idea. Instead I will celebrate her birthday like I have celebrated all the other birthdays this year, quietly and privately.
For more years than I can remember I have made a cake for my mom’s birthday. I have made towering German chocolate cakes, coconut covered hummingbird cakes, pineapple upside down cakes, complicated cakes that tasted good but that I vowed to never make again and simple cake mix sheet cakes. I have even changed it up and made or bought the occasional pie.
I often supplemented the cakes with cookies. My brothers like chocolate chip cookies, as do I. One year I discovered a recipe for snickerdoodles and mom requested them almost every year since then. For more than a week afterwards she would tell me that she still had cake and cookies left over and that they were still good.
I would also slip food into her refrigerator. Lunch meat that I thought was disgusting like souse, or maybe a bit of pork barbeque, or a small portion of kidney bean salad would be left for her to find, anything to get her away from her usual Twinkies.
That is over. I miss her.
Sometimes I forget she is gone. I reach for the phone and stop before my hand touches it. I find myself picking something up in the store and thinking, “Mom would like this,” then feeling a wave of sadness as I slowly put it back on the shelf.
Like most of Portland, I set some things out to sell last week. One of the objects I set out was Mom’s wheelchair. It was awful. Every time I looked at it I thought, “I’ll never push Mom through Wal-mart again,” and I would fight back tears. I would remember the times we would set up the card table in front of the garage, drag out the chairs and wheel her out there. We would play cards, all of us cheating, intentionally or not. We would laugh so loud it’s a wonder nobody called the police on us for disturbing the peace. Again, the tears would well up at the memory.
By the time an Amish family stopped by I was desperate to find the wheelchair a new home. They bought a few other items and I talked them into taking the chair for a dollar. I think they saw the desperation in my eyes and I’m pretty sure I heard the Amish phrase for “crazy lady” but I’m not sure. At least the chair now has a new home. I just hope it doesn’t cause the new owner to cheat at cards.
In the course of a lifetime we all lose people we love. We all handle the loss in our own ways. It takes time to come to terms to living life without our loved one. It takes time to sift through a lifetime of stuff to determine what to keep and what can be left for someone else. As we all know, time is something that can’t be rushed. We have our memories, some happy; some, not so much.
Life goes on. But I’d really rather be baking.