WEDDING REDUX

LUNA DRESSES UP FINE FOR WEDDINGS
   During the month of July, while everyone at home is sweating in 95 degree weather with 70% humidity, I'm in the mountains of Gunnison, Colorado, teaching in WSCU's graduate program in creative writing.  It's low residency, which means we run intensive writing seminars for 2 weeks, and do the rest of our work during the year on line.  A good gig for all concerned, and work I truly love.
    The only drawback for me is personal: My wedding anniversary falls right in the middle of it, so my husband and I don't get to celebrate the way we'd like.  Trust me, in this case, Skype just doesn't cut it.
     Of course, some people think anniversaries aren't important.  They're just another day, no more or less meaningful than any you spend together as a couple.  I get the relevance of that, I'll admit.  But no matter what our rational mind says, physical details of time and season cue us to remember past events.  The body remembers, and the human heart wants to acknowledge memory, re-invoke events with words and ritual.
     In the great Northeast, we scent approaching winter in the air, and start planning for Thanksgiving.  When a child's birthday comes around, mothers feel in their bodies the circumstances surrounding the birth, and re-tell the tale.  So it is with a wedding anniversary. And this year, on our anniversary, my husband emailed me a photo of the lilies in full bloom in our garden at home.
    We were married on the land where we'd built our house the year before.  We're both gardeners, so we dug through clay and shale, added the manure and compost to feed young green things, and planted the bulbs for those lilies.  Our gardens were still young, but they were blooming, and I have a clear memory of walking out my front door and picking the ones I'd carry as I walked to the tent where we'd exchange vows.
     When I saw the photo, I could once again feel the stem under my finger, the soft petals, moist at the edges. I heard the voices of our waiting guests in the background, laughter and music and the hum of conversation.  I saw my son's kind face, looking at mine.  He walked me across the yard for this, my third wedding, and later gave a funny speech about how the problem with my last two marriages was that he didn't get to say anything.
LILY MEMORY     And under all that external memory, I could feel again the calm assurance I had about my choice.   It was more than happiness, because it wasn't that fleeting. And it wasn't a certainty that everything would always be wonderful, because I knew better. It was a deep and abiding sense of rightness. A great big yes.  
    I still feel that way.  And every year, in the middle of July, even when I'm away from home, the lilies bloom to remind me of where it all began.
     Anniversaries allow us to return to where we started.  Sometimes that means we can better heal old hurts.  In the case of a happy anniversary, we can  drink from the energy in the well of memory, and once again fill up on the flavor of the good.

     To find out more about a really cool writing program in fiction, poetry and screenwriting, visit the website for Western State College University.    Come and join us.  Bring cake!
 
SUE'S WEDDING CAKE

   Sue is the kind of friend who baked cakes for a year before my wedding, and let me do taste tests to choose the one I wanted.  I chose chocolate cake with buttercream frosting and chocolate raspberry filling.  It had to be transported carefully to my house over some bumpy country roads, and then kept somewhere cool because, as she says, buttercream frosting is about the worst choice for an outdoor wedding in July.  But OH was it yummy. I'm still trying to think of an excuse for her to make it again.

A TRUE SUPERFOOD     When I asked for the recipe to include in this blog, she told me it's three pages long, and instead gave me the source, with her amendations.  Of course she changed it, because you know the rule:  PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD!
   
Sue's Email:
    It's from The Cake Bible , Rose Levy Beranbaum, 1988 3-Tier Genoise au Chocolate Wedding Cake to Serve 150 pp. 499-503.   Put Chambord in the syrup on p. 501. 
    Classic Buttercream for a 3-Tier Cake, Chocolate, pp. 517-18.  Chambord is the liquor in that one too. I increased the quantities on this recipe by 50%,  as your cake was heavy on the buttercream between the layers.  There was a little bit left, but I believe my two young kitchen wenches made it go away.

     Maida Heater's Book of Great Chocolate Desserts, 1980, The World's Best Hot Fudge Sauce, p. 373.     This sauce hardens up nicely - a hell of a lot better than that buttercream you'd picked to serve on what was probably the hottest day in five years.  I split each layer of the cake and spread it on to spackle the layers back together again, also adding a spread of fresh raspberries that had been macerated in Chambord.