OCCASUS
  • Home
  • Archives
    • Thesis Day 2020 >
      • Erin Anderson
      • Chantelle Ing
      • Olivia Smit
      • Shauna Valchuk
    • Boomerang >
      • The Art >
        • Alisha Ansems "Tangled Memories"
        • Lindsay Athoe "Study I" and "Study II"
        • Melissa Bareham "Suspension"
        • Ronnie Clarke "It Is Hard to Say"
        • Nick Cote "City Parks"
        • Liam Creed "Untitled"
        • Gwen Hovey "Jelly"
        • Marissa Martin "Childhood Wonder"
        • Alexa McKinnon "The Feminine Uncanny"
        • Amy Ngo "Untitled"
        • Jill Smith "Shelf Self String Thing" and "things a, b and c"
        • Rebecca Sun "Untitled 1" and "Untitled 2"
        • Gabriele Tyson (Andrew Fraser) "Strong Strides"
        • Val Vallejo "Digital Scaring"
        • Kewen Yan "Time Traveller"
      • The Art/The Poems >
        • Marissa Martin/Mary McDonald
        • Amy Ngo/Jill O'Craven
        • Rebecca Sun/Mary McDonald
        • Gabriele Tyson (Andrew Fraser)/Hashini Puwakgolle Mudiyanselage
        • Val Vallejo/Elizabeth Sak
        • Kewen Yan/Megan Gerret
      • The Poems >
        • Megan Gerrett "Traveller"
        • Mary McDonald "Beyond"
        • Mary McDonald "Blink Back"
        • Hashini Puwakgolle Mudiyanselage "Silent Battles"
        • Jill O'Craven "She is an Ocean"
        • Elizabeth Sak "Stalemate"
    • Issue 1
    • Issue 2
    • Issue 3 >
      • Judges: Issue 3
      • Contributors: Issue 3
    • Issue 4 >
      • Judges: Issue 4
      • Contributors: Issue 4
      • Poetry: Krista Bell
      • Poetry: Josh Garrett
      • Poetry: Erica McKeen
      • Poetry: Katharine O'Reilly
      • Poetry: Victoria Wiebe
      • Poetry: Eric Zadrozny
      • Creative Nonfiction: Ryan Bates
      • Creative Nonfiction: Devin Golets
      • Creative Nonfiction: Jonas Trottier
      • Experimental Writing, Film Sound: Rachel Ganzewinkel
      • Creative Nonfiction: Victoria Wiebe
      • Fiction: Raquel Farrington
      • Fiction: Yulia Lobacheva
      • Fiction: Alexander Martin
      • Fiction: Tiffany Shepherd
      • Fiction: Jonas Trottier
      • On the Night Before Your Father's Funeral, By Katharine O'Reilly
      • Market Blooms By Robyn Obermeyer
      • All That Glitters By Julia Cutt
      • Mosaic By Evan Pebesma
      • love song 2 By Joy Zhiqian Xian
      • Student Writer in Residence: Steve Slowka
    • Issue 5 >
      • Judges: Issue 5
      • Contributors: Issue 5
      • Poetry: Rayna Abernethy
      • Poetry: Chelsea Brimstin
      • Poetry: Natalie Franke
      • Poetry: Kevin Heslop
      • Poetry: Katarina Huellemann
      • Poetry: Cara Leung
      • Poetry: Tamara Spencer
      • Poetry: Travis Welowsky
      • Poetry: Victoria Wiebe
      • Creative Nonfiction: Lyndsay Fearnall
      • Creative Nonfiction: Gary Jackson
      • Fiction: Patricia Arhinson
      • Fiction: Lyndsay Fearnall
      • Fiction: Levi Hord
      • Fiction: Richard Joseph
      • Fiction: Erica McKeen
      • Experimental Writing: Laura McKinstry
      • Experimental Writing: Brittany Renaud
      • Short Film: Ethan Radomski
      • ALFRED R. POYNT AWARD IN POETRY >
        • Poynt Award: Emma Croll-Baehre
        • Poynt Award: Robyn Obermeyer
        • Poynt Award: David Witmer
    • Issue 6 >
      • Judges: Issue 6
      • Contributors: Issue 6
      • Ficton: Sam Boer
      • Ficton: Sydney Brooman
      • Ficton: Erica McKeen
      • Ficton: Esther Van Galen
      • Creative Nonficton: Erica McKeen
      • Creative Nonficton: Brittany Tilstra
      • Creative Nonficton: Nathan Wright-Edwards
      • Poetry: Chelsea Brimstin
      • Poetry: Rachael Hofford
      • Poetry: Elana Katz
      • Poetry: Erica McKeen
      • Poetry: R. A. Robinson
      • Poetry: Elizabeth Sak
      • Experimental Writing: Sydney Brooman
      • Experimental Writing: Erica McKeen
      • Experimental Writing: Brittany Renaud
      • Experimental Writing: Brittany Renaud
      • Short Film: Dejvi Dashi
      • Short Film: Matthew Carr
    • Issue 7 >
      • Contributors: Issue 7
      • Judges: Issue 7
      • Poetry: Michelle Baleka
      • Poetry: Jenny Berkel
      • Poetry: Kevin Heslop
      • Poetry: Katarina Huellemann
      • Poetry: Nathan Little
      • Poetry: Erica McKeen
      • Poetry: Kaela Morin
      • Poetry: Elizabeth Sak
      • Poetry: Kate Zahnow
      • Experimental Writing and Film: Erica McKeen
      • Experimental Writing and Film: Shauna Ruby Valchuk
      • Fiction: James Gagnon
      • Fiction: Megan Levine
      • Fiction: Erica McKeen
      • Fiction: Cassia Pelton
      • Fiction: Julia Rooth
      • Creative NonFiction: Noa Rapaport
      • Screenplays: Sydney Brooman
      • Screenplays: Nathan Wright-Edwards
    • Issue 8 >
      • Judges: Issue 8
      • Contributors: Issue 8
      • Poetry 8: Danielle Bryl-Dam
      • Poetry 8: Leah Kuiack
      • Poetry 8: Jameson Lawson
      • Poetry 8: Maxwell Lucas
      • Poetry 8: Kaela Morin
      • Poetry 8: Joanna Shepherd
      • Fiction 8: Mason Frankel
      • Fiction 8: Rylee Loucks
      • Fiction 8: Celia Kate Shapcott
      • Fiction 8: Amy Wang
      • Fiction 8: Blake Zigrossi
      • Screenplays 8: Naomi Barghel
      • Screenplays 8: Amanda Inglese
      • Screenplays 8: Jeff Simpson
      • Creative Nonfiction 8: Tiffany Austin
      • Creative Nonfiction 8: Jenny Berkel
      • Creative Nonfiction 8: Carolina Jung
      • Creative Nonfiction 8: Leah Kuiack
      • Creative Nonfiction 8: Li-elle Rapaport
      • Creative Nonfiction 8: Amy Wang
      • Experimental 8: Lauren Lee
      • Experimental 8: Kirah Ougniwi
      • Experimental 8: Carlie Thompson-Bockus
      • Plays 8: Camille Inston
    • Issue 9 >
      • Contributors: Issue 9
      • Fiction 9: Chris Chang
      • Fiction 9: Tegan Wilder
      • Fiction 9: Hyacinth Zia
      • Creastive Nonfiction 9: Aidan Gugula
      • Poetry 9: Rachel Fawcett
      • Poetry 9: Matthew Simic
      • Experimental Writing 9: Shauna Ruby Valchuk
      • Screenplays 9: Naomi Barghiel
      • Screenplays 9: Alicia Johnson
      • Screenplays 9: Keaton Olsen
      • Screenplays 9: Rachel Yan
    • Issue 10 >
      • Contributors: Issue 10
      • Experimental Writing 10: Akshi Chadha
      • Experimental Writing 10: Adelphi Eden
      • Experimental Writing 10: Nicole Feutl
      • Experimental Writing 10: Isabella Kennedy
      • Experimental Writing 10: Christopher Paul
      • Poetry 10: Meaghan Furlano
      • Poetry 10: Li-elle Rapaport
      • Fiction 10: Meaghan Furlano
      • Fiction 10: Carly Pews
      • Creative Noniction 10: Nicole Feutl
      • Creative Noniction 10: Courtney WZ
      • Screenplay 10: Margaret Huntley
  • Issue 11.1
    • Contributors: Issue 11.1
    • Fiction 11.1: Tega Aror
    • Fiction 11.1: Chloe Bachert
    • Fiction 11.1: Kelly Ge
    • Fiction 11.1: Asia Porcu
    • Fiction 11.1: Taryn Rollins
    • Fiction 11.1: Pauline Shen
    • Poetry 11.1: Jennifer Adamou
    • Poetry 11.1: Katherine Barbour
    • Poetry 11.1: Akshi Chadha
    • Poetry 11.1: Emma Graham
    • Poetry 11.1: Li-elle Rapaport
  • Issue 11.2
    • Contributors: Issue 11.2
    • Fiction 11.2: Victoria Domazet
    • Fiction 11.2: Mackenzie Emberley
    • Fiction 11.2: Rachel Oseida
    • Fiction 11.2: Cindy Xie
    • Creative Nonfiction 11.2: Alex Rozenberg
    • Creative Nonfiction 11.2: Alanna Zorgdrager
    • Poetry 11.2: Cassy Player
    • Poetry 11.2: Madeleine Schaafsma
    • Experimental 11.2: Mackenzie Emberley
  • Submissions
  • About
    • Mission
    • Masthead
    • Writing Studies at Western
    • Contact
  • Writing Studies
September 14, 2015 | Occasus | Issue 5 | Fiction

Take the Cake

        On a sunny July afternoon, I stand flushed and exasperated in my parents’ kitchen as my hopes of a perfect looking birthday cake melt into a sticky heap of lemon filling.
        “It’s fine. I’m fine. Will you just get out of the kitchen?”
        The words fly out of my mouth before I can catch them, and my mother, who has been hovering by the counter offering suggestions, wordlessly exits.   
        I fight the urge to bring my fist down hard onto the precariously stacked layers as they slide slowly off the cake stand in front of me. Yellow filling oozes as if the cake is sticking out its tongue at me. The layers are too heavy, the filling is too runny, and the icing just isn’t thick enough to hold everything together. I’m trying to copy the photograph of a perky yellow cake wearing a pristine coat of frosting but my cake is lumpy and lopsided. After almost an hour of fighting with the thing, there are crumbs in the icing. I hate crumbs in my icing.
        Such are the joys of baking a birthday cake.

        When I look through my parents’ old photo albums, there are almost as many photographs of cake as there are pictures of family members. In one of my favourite photos, my brother stands on a chair in my grandparents’ house surveying the elaborate landscape of a Thomas the Tank Engine birthday cake. Thomas trundles along on plastic train tracks through a forest of evergreen trees. A colourful border of hand-piped flowers circles the scene. I love the look of pure concentration on my brother’s face as he tries to absorb every detail. Everyone around him is looking at the cake too. Sure, it might be his second birthday, but the cake… it takes the cake, really. You can’t help but stare at it. This is the unmistakeable work of my Grandma Fearnall.
        When it came to birthdays, there was no kidding around for Pat Fearnall: birthdays required cake, and cake was a serious business. There was a car cake for Gary’s sixteenth birthday, a tree planting- themed cake for Jodi, and a cake topped with a plastic man on skis to commemorate Bruce’s skiing accident. There were vanilla cakes covered in chocolate rosebuds, and chocolate cakes covered in M&M’s and colourful frills, and cakes covered with plastic balloons and plastic toys and a framed photograph of my aunt holding a satchel of saplings in the middle of Northern Ontario. My grandma could cement pretty much anything into a thick layer of icing. 
        It would probably be easier to see these famous cakes as emblems of my grandmother’s devotion to her family, but that over-simplifies things. My grandma was a woman of many layers. As a kid, I saw the talkative, sarcastic woman—the one with an affinity for hairspray, plum lipstick that left marks all over my cheeks, and a strong conviction that just one more cookie couldn’t hurt. More recently I learned about the woman who never quite found a way to be happy. The cakes were labours of love, but they were also the products of an intense perfectionism that ruled over her existence. My grandma wanted the kind of life one could only hope to find on the glossy pages of a magazine. Hidden in the frosting were unfulfilled ideas about what life was supposed to be like: bright colours, crisp lines, and lots of sweetness. When my grandma placed a cake in front of one of her children, she also presented them with her dreams. Do something big, the cakes seem to whisper, make me proud.
        Nonetheless, it’s the imperfections that make these cakes so special. What takes my breath away is how incredibly personal they are. The tiers aren’t quite tall enough, the frosting is a little too lumpy, and the designs are a bit too elaborate to look like something purchased from a bakery. Perfect is boring. The carefully piped borders occasionally reveal the smallest quiver, a reminder of the hand that piped them. These cakes didn’t get to be perfect, my grandma didn’t get to be perfect, and neither did the people she baked for. My grandma loved her family immensely; everything else was icing. I always wonder what her life might have been like if she could have seen that. My grandma made beautiful cakes and she raised beautiful people. But neither her cakes, nor the people who ate them, could ever make her life quite as beautiful as she wanted it to be.

        My lemon cake looks nothing like the one on the baking blog. Yet, when I place it in front of my grandfather, my aunt snaps a picture and my family reassures me that it’s perfect. It isn’t, but it tastes pretty good. Instead of focusing on the flaws, I think about my grandma and her empty seat at the table. I remember about the car, the skier, the trees, and Thomas the Tank Engine. And for a moment I can acknowledge that sometimes things are okay with a few extra crumbs.
LYNDSAY FEARNALL is a fourth year student at Huron University College where she is completing an Honours Specialization in English Language and Literature.

Western University
Department of English and Writing Studies
© Copyright 2022 | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Picture