Bowl Of Cake

In a week that has contained all kinds of things soap--from birthdays to deaths to commemorations (and yes, an election that we might wish were fiction)--I found myself thinking about "bowl of cake," a party food I created for many a One Life To Live celebration over the years. It's nothing particularly fancy--just an adaptation of a British trifle, combining cake and pudding and fruit, with endless variations on the combinations.

I don't quite remember when it was that I transitioned from going out with petty cash to buy a grocery store cake to using my own money to prepare a special creation at home and bring it in, presumably by bus and train. And perhaps my making the "bowl of cake" didn't even last that long. But when I think about it, I am struck by the two things it represented--creativity, as I never made it the same way twice--and community, as it not only managed to bring people together to eat, but was also one of my unique ways of connecting with a group of people who had become like family.

It has been a long time since I made "bowl of cake." It's probably high time  to revisit it. But, with or without the "bowl of cake," I find that life (or at least the joy in it) mostly comes down to those two things: creativity--that piece of ourselves that we put into everything we do, and community--the connections we form, and the strength we derive from being connected--at work, in organizations, even on the bus and train.

The days of One Life to Live, and perhaps the days of "bowl of cake" are long gone. But the days of creativity and community live on, if we let them.

There must be an occasion coming up--time for a little cake, and pudding, and fruit. And a celebration of what makes us unique, and of what makes us part of a group that matters.