3-layer cakes and the "good old days"....

I've been thinking a lot lately about the "good old days." How are they defined? Growing up I would, from time to time, hear about an era and think to myself, "those must have been the good old days that everyone talks about." Then I'd hear about something terrible associated with that time period. For example, that cocaine was routinely prescribed for fussy Victorian-era babies. Or you could Google the term "twilight birth," which was routine from the 1920s-1960s. Time after time, I have been disappointed. Every era has its downsides.

Now, I am struggling not to launch into too much of a tirade describing my recent enlightenment about the "good old days." I'm going to try to focus on two things that have been going on in our lives lately.

The first is that I have had the great privilege of translating some World War II-era letters from a mother and father in Watford City, N. D., to their son who was a soldier. After reading Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation, I was pretty sure that, if not the "good old days," the people that lived in that generation were somehow "different" than people today--nobler, tougher, and much more morally fibrous.

What I found in the letters was eye-opening; the son, who wrote to his parents in English, described the service, where he didn't seem to quite "fit in," as there was so much smoking, drinking and swearing by the rest of the troops. When this guy would find a "good Christian fellow" to "chum around with," he would write happily to his parents about it. Sounds a lot like my college experience. Of course this guy was a lot more "holy" than I am in that he also avoided the wicked temptation of "the picture shows" and all the filthy sin that was portrayed therein.

In his parents' letters back to him (which were written in Norwegian) I found a distinctly more familiar form of faith expression--simple words like "God bless you," "God willing," etc. Although this guy (who was 26 at the time) grew up in a Christian home, he displayed a lot of the same exuberance about his faith that a lot of young Christians do when they are first "out in the world." Hmm. It just seemed so familiar.

I also learned of the family's trials, spread out over the years 1942-1945. The family had lost a 9-year-old son in 1941 to a burst appendix, and another son in 1945, "skyt i hjel av tyskerne" (shot by the Germans), just when things were beginning to settle down. "Kindly" gossip is interspersed about who married whom, who didn't get an inheritance because he is "pickled" far too often, and who was moving west in the great North Dakota outmigration.

It has been such a privilege, a wonderful experience, to be able to get to know this family through their letters. It's helped me brush up on my rapidly-deteriorating Norwegian and helped me remember that the "good old days" are now, while we are making them.

2 pounds of powdered sugar? I don't know what that is, but it sounds yummy!

Okay, now to the other event--Matthias' first birthday. I'm not one to make a big show of celebrations--usually the harder you try the more things there are to get messed up, which really does make for good memories down the road but a lot of work in the short run.  So after poring over pictures of elaborate John Deere cakes, I chose to continue my grandma's and mom's tradition and make Matthias a 3-layer white cake. I doubt my grandma used a cake mix, but my mom did and so did I, but I made this frosting by hand with almost 2 pounds each of butter and powdered sugar!

Obviously, this is not the cake. The picture of the cake is on my camera's hard drive and I can't find the cord so here's Matthias' cupcake.

I actually made a "practice cake" and took it to my Lutheran Women are Awesome group (where three other gals and I read the Lutheran Confessions together while our children wreak havoc). That was probably the most time-consuming thing I did, other than the frosting.

My mom always sighs when I ask for the 3-layer cake. It never turns out quite "right," in her opinion. Either the top layer slides slightly to the side, or splits apart altogether. I'm not sure how my grandma got her 3-layers to turn out so well. I'm not sure, either, how Matthias' 3-layer turned out so well. In the world of cake decorating, this one might be considered a "fail," but it was definitely a "win" for me!

Now, to prove that my ramblings have a common thread, I will close with it. The things that we remember about special occasions like birthdays aren't how the green of the plates matched the green of the frosting, or how there is a perfect shot of the birthday child sticking their head strategically into the strategically-made "smash cake." At least not for me. The things I remember and treasure are the cracked top layers of cakes, oozing with Mom's powdered-sugar frosting, the time that powdered sugar was used to thicken gravy instead of flour (whoops!), and the prescence of loved ones. Make the pictures black-and-white, and one might even think that the party happened in the "good old days," which, of course, it did!