Let them eat cake!

On a particularly sunny afternoon, I found myself sitting across from my mother at a vaccination site. We weren’t scheduled to be there together, but the universe in its infinite wisdom made it so we were. As we sat amongst others in the bustling waiting area, I took a look around as a moment of silence approached us.

"Wow"....I said...."We made it."

"Yes...we did," She gently replied.

I took a deep breath, allowing the realization, its significance and all the oxygen I could, into my chest.

I exhaled and asked:

"What do we do now?"

She looked up and in her most sage and unyielding voice she said:

"We live....We live."

That sentiment has bounced around in my spirit almost every day since. If I’m being honest with myself, there was a sense of being stuck that had creeped in long before the pandemic. Quarantine had only emphasized it and made it impossible for it not to be seen. In between working from home while balancing homeschooling, laundry and the litany of other house chores, packing up for a move, as well as so very many dishes, where exactly would I have found the time to ponder brighter tomorrows and ask myself the big questions like : Who am I now? What matters to me and what do I want to do with this gifted remaining balance of my life? (my hats off to you if you did indeed have the time to do so) So when the moment, at the vaccination site with my mother arrived, I knew I had now slipped into a space where the possibility of a new normal was on the horizon, and I was, with good reason, being lovingly forced to contend with what the new now and future would mean for me.

Days later, a box with some answers would appear at my doorstep. Elated but unsure of what to fully expect, I sat it on the table and started unboxing. The Cricut Maker had been hailed as one of the foremost die-cutting machines on the market. I can’t say I knew all of what there was to know about it (still don’t) but there was something about seeing it for the first time that awakened something in me I had unknowingly tempered in the routine of managing life in a pandemic and avoiding the news: curiosity.

I spent hours those first few weeks learning how to use it and it’s software. The real challenges emerged when it came to matching up what I wanted to make with what I could feasibly figure out to make without getting frustrated and resorting to growling at the screen while angrily shoveling oreos into my mouth.(We all have our coping mechanisms, please let’s not start judging each other here)

My initial feelings of exhilaration and grandiose plans with the Cricut seeming in freefall one night after a failed attempt at a custom t- shirt (the vinyl print was hilariously too small, the heat press was not so hilariously too hot) when in a dismayed stupor, I scrolled through the predesigned projects in Design space and landed on a gift box shaped like a cake slice. “Hmm.” I said to myself. “That could be kind of cool.”

The next morning, I eagerly awakened before my kids would have to get up for school and went straight to prepare the mats with some basic cardstock. I slid them gingerly into the Cricut one by one as the machine whirled and masterfully cut each piece. It took me all morning and the amount of glue used would have definitely helped all the king's horses and all the king's men put Humpty Dumpty back together again, but there it was: my first slice of paper cake box in pumpkin pie colors. Maybe it was the glow of a successful project, or the fact that for once I was just playing around with no agenda but there’s no fudging this, I was pretty obsessed with this box and I wanted to show it off to anyone who would listen: there were the FaceTime calls with friends, the grabbing my kids during their breaks, the mail person, people at the craft store. “Hey! How are you? I'm GREAT! I made a fake cake slice box today! You want to see it? HERE IT IS! Isn’t it just the coolest thing ever??? I know right?!? It opens at the top like this! Pretty neat huh!!? Nice chatting with you! Have a great day!”

With all this excitement and feeling of momentum, It was no surprise to me when a day or two later I wondered what an entire cake of fake cake slice boxes would look like. I guessed it would take 6, no 7 slices to make, fiddled with the settings in design space and then cut and assembled each slice. I was only about 2 slices off and it took me all day to put each slice together and compile a cake. I was HYPE. I couldn't tell you why or what I would use this compilation creation for but that didn’t mean a thing. A fake cake was what I wanted and by golly I had it! This time I figured it would be best to take a picture and send it to the aforementioned friends. Also a picture would be more portable and easier to show to the unsuspecting strangers that didn’t know nor had any desire to know that such a marvelous thing existed! How serendipitous and fortunate for them! You might have gone to Target looking for some bread, but you came out with bread AND knowing someone who may be unhinged but likely harmless because they were newly in love with making paper crafts, especially of the food/gift box variety! Yeehaw!

I was on fire baby! And before I knew it Mother’s Day was approaching and I now had the BEST idea. I would make these for the mothers in my life who could use a few self care products wrapped in magic. Finding things that would fit into the small spaces wouldn’t be easy, but most adventures worth going on aren’t either. Along the journey came ideas of fitting, a small wallet multi tool, bath bombs and candles, candy or health bar, tiny ornate containers of coconut oil, small fun smelling bottles of hand sanitizer and some custom items to give personalization.

The first set was made with the theme of red velvet cake in mind and it came out beautifully. I laid the slices in the cake box I purchased and waited for a sense of completion to arrive. It didn’t and instead a feeling of perplexment arrived in its absence. I stared at the blankness of box and thought that maybe it could use a little jazzing up. I grabbed my scissors, picked up some leftover scrap paper from the cake slices, traced some flower/vine-like things out and placed them on the top of the box. That was it, the box needed some coordinating color. I cut more and added more and then for good measure grabbed some jewel stickers and ribbon and Voila! We now had a presentable offering! That in love feeling returned like it does after a disconnect with a lover. I was back in business and onto the next when tragedy struck. A friend of my mother's had lost her child to senseless violence and the funeral was just days before Mother’s Day. My mother, tasked with delivering the eulogy, asked me to come up with something to give the grieving mother on the first Mother’s Day she would spend without her son.

I badly wanted to say no because nothing I could ever make would live up to meeting that moment and it would be disrespectful to ever imagine it could. However the thought landed that though we could never meet the moment with our offering, we could at least extend thoughts of love and support, and hoped that maybe the oddness of the gift would distract her for just a few moments. It was amidst the rush in making and designing and ascertaining the paper needed for this set that I looked up and realized that I was doing it. I was doing what I had questioned in the weeks before.

I was living.

Somewhere in the piles of paper, scraps, tools there I was, the me I wanted to be. Someone who was creating, someone who was on the prowl and up to the challenge. This was it. This is what being alive and living meant to me. This is how I want to feel. This is how I want to spend my life: creating.

Once I finished the set and fitted the box with it’s “Sending love” message on the top, surrounded by hearts, I promised myself that now that I had a glimpse of who I wanted to be I would never pass up the chance to rendezvous with that sacred part of myself again.

The next opportunity presented itself in the form of my younger sister’s best friend, who was graduating, 2nd in her class and on her way to medical school and out into the world where she will undoubtedly be a force to reckon with. She’s a smart, reflective wise cracking young woman who shares a love with her late grandmother for God and pink roses. When my mom came to me with the request to create something unique for her, I immediately understood that I would need to greatly level up from my previous works. After-all, someone who manages to graduate 2nd in their class during a once in a lifetime pandemic deserves nothing but the best or at least our best attempt at doing so.

The floral themed card stock was easy enough to find and by now the cake slices would be assembled in no time but the real challenge would come in designing the box. Some would argue that a cake box should look just as it is. I would respond that all that real estate is space waiting for a story to be told and that’s exactly what happened with this one. In my research, I had stumbled upon Lia Griffith and her extraordinary paper floral creations and decided to use some of her legendary magic. Using her designs, I cut and I crafted different shades of pink roses. Using frosted paper and learning to curl the edges using my scissors, I marveled at how realistic these tiny wonders looked. The easy thing would have been to simply put roses all over the box, the rim and edges of the box, but easy was not the vibe for this. Images of elevation and grandeur kept creeping into my mind. I wanted something that symbolizes her great accomplishment but also her continuous and emerging ascent. Whatever this was, it was going to have to be 3D and would certainly need more supplies and I would be in need of many snacks and much caffeine.

My first attempt at building such a presentation kept me awake until 3:30 in the morning. It wasn’t as study or as prominent as it needed to be, so I went to sleep and was appreciative to wake up with fresh ideas.

I could drag you through every little detail as there was a lot that happened between that moment and the finished product. I’ll spare you unlike my new random friends whom I sprung on at the onset of this. What I will tell you: this offering is the most spectacular thing I have made to date. I am immensely humbled by things I learned both from a physical build perspective as well as from a spiritual one during this process. Though this young lady was the recipient of this magnificent structure, it is I who walked away with so much more. I know now the importance and the power of listening to creative energy and the work that it wants to be done. I know how to honor the sanctity of the moment when a new idea or concept emerges and most importantly I know now that the me of today and tomorrow is capable of creating anything that I want in this life. Especially the kind of life I want to live.

Thank you for your consideration.