Our Mother’s Cake Wars

“Morituri salutamus te!” My mother muttered in the car on the way to Devil’s Lake. (That’s what the Roman gladiators said when they entered the arena: “We who are about to die salute you!”) She’d studied Latin at the Catholic school across the street from our church before it was converted into an elementary school. However, she sent us to public schools. “The public schools are really better.”

Mom was a good fighter. And, indeed, the barbs, digs, snottiness, and gentle feminine quarrels were about to begin in the aptly-named Devil’s Lake, which was so cold that only devils could survive there, or so they said.  Mom had vowed three years ago that she would never make this terrible trip again.  Dad insisted on bringing us kids, and she would not let us go to those wild parts without a chaperone. 

“Here we are,”  she said as we pulled up in front of a dismal bungalow on a bare treeless street. Mom refreshed her lipstick in the rearview mirror, then smiled a fake smile that told those who knew her, “Beware!”

There was a cake war in Devil’s Lake. The aunts had been getting ready for days. Mom was not a baker. She bought an angel food cake at Hy-Vee for this occasion.  “It will be the best-looking cake there,” she predicted.

She still stung from last time when the aunts patronized her for bringing a Duncan Hines cake.  The aunts had made their cakes from scratch, and though they were lopsided, like something I might make, and the Duncan HInes cake tasted better, they were intense about cake.

But this time the aunts did not thank her for the angel food’s cake. Instead, they offered to teach her to make homemade.

“No, thank you,” she said, and gathered up her purse.

Anyone who didn’t like the Hy-Vee angel food cake ranked very low in her estimation. Anyone who didn’t thank her for it ranked lower. “Mom, can we take the cake with us?” we asked as we got ready to leave.

“Manners,” she hissed.

These women were at war: cake was the weapon.

The Daughter’s Cake Wars

“Morituri salutamus te!” I said as my boyfriend drove at a snail’s pace through a blizzard. This time, my mother’s favorite slogan, “We who are about to die salute you!”, was appropriate. While we looked for signs or a rest stop, I rolled down the window and wiped the snow off the windshield with a mitten.  The snow fell faster than I could wipe. Then the car broke down.

This was a letdown for my macho boyfriend, not to roll into town on his own wheels. His reticent father (in retrospect, my favorite in-law) picked us up and gave us an impromptu tour of the city as we drove through the blizzard in the dark.

However, many surprises lay ahead. I thought my boyfriend was poor, because of his shabby clothes: instead of a winter coat, he wore layers of jackets over a sweater with a hole under the arm. I’d expected to meet his warm, working-class family. But, alas, there was no warm welcome at childhood home of the love of my life. If we’d worn a mood ring, it would have been CRANKY.

The three-story house was enormous. It was in a posh neighborhood! What the…? Who were these people?

His mother barely said hello, and two of his sisters stared balefully. “I hate this,” one said, possibly after I said hello. “I know,” the other equally charming girl said. During the next 10 snowbound days they did not talk to me. I tried to make light conversation, even about books (a desperate topic, but one was an English major) but these snobbish girls just grunted, nor did they chat much to their brother.

“They ignore you because they hate me,” he said.

“I do not accept that explanation,” I said.

Several times a day we walked at a nearby park. At night we went to a hockey game, or the movies, or played Scrabble with the family: someone’s boyfriend had a breakdown because he didn’t have any letters – that is always the luck of the draw.

You get the idea: but I must tell you about the pancake war!

On a cold winter morning, is there anything better than pancakes? The family did not breakfast together; everybody got up at different times, and ate cereal or whatever; but one morning I caught my future ma-in-law making pancakes for my boyfriend.

“How lovely!” I said. “Mrs. _, I love pancakes.”

Too bad, because she shut down the operation and walked away. No pancakes for me!

Welcome to the family!!!

What is it about cakes, or pancakes, and in-laws?