The Fathers Day Cake

Its Father's Day and I am feeling like I need to say something. At different times in my life I have spoken on a number of subjects ranging from why tax on food should be abolished for food stamp recipients to one stop service shopping for the elderly to why we should be patriotic and of service to our community and country. I have spoken about and on a lot of subjects. In just a few short months I will be 44 and I have never spoken about fathers.

So I began to think a few days ago when I found out we were going to have this shin-dig about what I wanted to bring to the party. I said to myself; everyone likes that cake that you make as long as you don't burn it up so that would be good, but gee it sure would be nice to bring something new. I looked through cookbooks and cake books and couldn't find anything I could be sure would work. I found a few possibilities and the pictures looked really dressed to the nines but I was unsure that when it came down to the wire and it was time to make the cake that I could locate all the ingredients. There was the question of would it actually work for me the way it claimed to in the ad. And, then could I trust that it would be well received or would it fail me.

I didn't know what to do. I thought about doing a fast to see if the answer would come to me. Actually, I was leafing through one of the cookbooks and found a fasting diet where you only drink grapefruit juice for twelve days. Its supposed to cleanse the body and give you clarity about your life. I gave this some thought and decided I would definitely do this if the drink were different because I don't like grapefruit juice. However I do like strawberries and then it occurred to me that the perfect fasting drink for me would be strawberry daiquiris. But, after some consideration on this I decided that drinking only strawberry daiquiris for twelve days would probably be considered more of a "problem" rather than a fast. So I gave up on the fast and began to pray. I began to pray to Our Father over a cake. Most people pray about world peace or for enlightenment…I pray about cakes. I swear the older I get the more I realize that I apparently operate on a very small scale.

My answer came in the form of a pair of pliers. My neighbor asked if I had a regular OLD pair of pliers. I wasn't sure. My son Jake takes care of all those things and he wasn't home. I looked in the closet and found an old plastic yellow kit that my stepfather Ken had given me when I first moved in my apartment with my kids. I remember he knocked on my door and said I want you to keep these here. I will come and work on anything that breaks down but when I am not here, your gonna need these. It had pliers, screwdriver, hammer and some other thingys that are not recognizable to me on site. I asked my neighbor if that was what he was looking for and he told me it was and he said; Ya know you just cant beat these old ones they don't look like the new ones do but they get the job done every time. So I felt like I had my answer to my prayer about my cake. But as I began to bake I realized I had missed the lesson in all of this.

I have had a lot of men take a father role in my life, I think I am lucky that way. Some people believe they only have one father. I don't believe that's true. In my own life I do have my biological father, who was not a good father for a very long time. He is trying to make up for that now and periodically I get angry that we missed so much time. He has taught me that you can atone and mean it but more importantly if you don't ever act up or out, you don't ever have to say your sorry….and mean it. He has made me look into myself and see that there is a fine line between love and hate and forgiveness requires realizing that you are hanging on to the hate as a grown up because you are afraid if you let go you wont find the love for a child. I think the key is the same as when a child is learning to walk. She wants to take those steps into her fathers beckoning arms but she is afraid he wont catch her if she falls. In the end forgiveness requires trust in yourself that you wont fall and the knowledge that if you do you are capable of picking yourself back up and being whole .