Wild Blackberries: Part Two

I made a three layered meringue cake with berries and whipped cream. It was so yummy and quite the achievement since it was a damp day. I have always wanted to make one but never attempted it. It was easier than I thought it would be. It occurred to me that if I became really great at making these little desserts that maybe they could one day become a family tradition.

This was an early birthday cake I made for us, all three of us. Baby August and I may share a birthday.  I usually go back to my hometown to visit my mom in April and to celebrate my birthday. I'll see her soon just not this month. Every year she tells me I was born at 10:10am and that she loves to hear the mourning doves coo on that day and throughout the month just as they did on those days leading up to and on the morning of my birth.  I found myself missing my mom and all those special cakes and desserts she has made me over the years for my birthday.

I thought of my 19th birthday. It fell on Easter Sunday and she visited me when I was in college for the long weekend. On that Saturday, I took her to Terra Toys, my favorite toy store in Austin, TX to show her the Steiff stuffed animals and German dolls behind a glass case. I showed her the things I would have wanted had I been ten years younger and she wanted to get me a Steiff but at 19 I was feeling too adult for that sort of thing. Now I wish we had picked one out together. Instead, for some reason,  I couldn't resist this African thumb piano and a hand carved Russian flute.

Then we went to the mall and stopped at a store window where we both admired a simple, off white, cotton dress. I went in to try it on and fell in love with it. My mother bought it for me and I still have it and wear it during the summer. That was the only year I remember my mom not making me a dessert or a cake because of the long drive to Austin and the lack of cooking/baking facilities at the hotel and dorm.  Now I will be a mommy and I hope to make my daughter cakes and desserts every year on her day for as long as I can. These past nine months have made me love and treasure my mother and what she has done for me even more.