Cakes and time

My great-grandmother Hayes (according to my father) would always insist on fresh-baked cakes for Sunday High Tea. Appetizing and dusted with powered sugar, they'd appear at table, along side the cream and home-made jam.  But they carried one proviso.  No one could taste the fresh cakes until the stale ones from last week had been eaten first.

So every week the family would dutifully chew the stale cakes, until finally they were all gone.  At this point no one wanted any more cake of any sort.

And so the fresh cakes were put back in the cupboard, to re-emerge the following week, stale and tasteless.

Week after week, no one ever got to eat the fresh cakes.  Grandma's generosity, and her love and hard work in baking, were undermined by her sense of what was "right" and by her frugality. No one had a good time.

Generosity is for here and now.  Love, also, is for right now.

Eat fresh cakes.