cake or death?

my mother sent me home from connecticut with a sponge cake.

i would like to think that she baked the cake for me, to take, a cake with which to nourish myself, because moms like to nourish. i would think that had she not berated me for ruining the cake by taking it out of the oven ten minutes too soon. i had been unable to leave the house while she ran off to fulfill her sunday duties as a devout, god-fearing immigrant, and ascribed the duty of "taking out the cake at 12:15pm." it was a trying task, but i somehow managed and followed her directions; golden brown top, clean toothpick. i was later condescendingly rebuked for the cake's resultant "shrinkage", only to have it wrapped for me in aluminum foil and packed away in my to-go bag of boston provisions.

in the moment, i had found this to be excess- mom, i don't need this, please, no really, please, what on earth will i do with an entire loaf of cake? i imagined it sitting on a counter somewhere, becoming increasingly stale and crusty. what a shame, i might say. only it doesn't happen this way at all; it never does. i am a lazy bitch and often times live like quite the frugal fanny (yet comically i can succumb to the temptations of an overpriced vintage 1960s frock, while insisting on eating cereal for dinner because i just mustn't spend the cash). i suppose the money is there and i'd just rather wear it. and so it goes, the sponge cake i so vehemently abhorred (and likely as some sort of symbol of my inability to take care of myself) has slowly but surely whittled down to a couple inches of thickness- nothing one more instance of breakfast time hunger won't deplete. in conclusion, my shrunken floppy sponge cake incident has probably saved me somewhere in the realm of fifteen dollars. thanks mom.

this can't help but remind me of the time my sister nancee pushed what one might call a "goodie bag" of sorts upon me the night before my trip to portugal (containing a six hour layover in brussels). i insisted that i did not need such things; gummy snacks, peanut butter crackers, granola bars, all of which were taken from her five-year-old son's snack cabinet. listen, i thought, i am going to land in a realm of espresso and pastries and fine port wines, i have no need for such american nonsense. and so i tucked the ziploc bag away in a deep pocket of my backpack and forgot about it for a while, that is, until my portuguese host family began starving me. had i known that this glorious little bag of supplies would constitute for the majority of my daily calorie intake over the course of my first week abroad, i would have demanded more. perhaps it is just the european way, or the way of a family with a busy, travelling father and a formerly anorexic mother who maintains the weight of approximately one of my thighs. who can say exactly. what i can say is that though delicious, breakfast came early, and then following came 10-12 hours spent being active with no food whatsoever. due to the fact that i did not yet have any european currency, and the fact that i did not speak a lick of the language, i was in quite the pickle. my boyfriend at the time was strapped for cash and i was in a strange phase of adjustment; my embarrassed silence progressed into the occasional whining, and ultimately evolved into absolute low-down hostility. by the time dinner would roll around (though i'm not sure why they bother calling it "dinner" if it comes around the time i'd typically already be inebriated and craving late-night munchies), i would be so famished that my insides felt like they were rotting and i wanted more to vomit and/or to pass out. there was one day i recall being particularly hellish. we had come home and finally plopped ourselves down at the dinner table, utterly exhausted and absolutely ravenous. i was salivating and drunk on the meals fumes. he began serving me a piece of bacalao and my eyes widened with glee. before the fish could even hit my plate, his mother made a comment about how it was too much food for me and i would never be able to eat it all. i then watched a portion of the serving return to its originating platter and sunk into my chair. it's okay, i'd reassure myself, i still have my bag. during those gaps of time where i knew meals were improbable, i began to ration myself the remnants of the bag- like bastian in the neverending story saving a portion of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich because he knew it would be a long motherfucking journey.

i suppose when you see someone on a daily basis, you do not realize they are withering away; you do not see their slouchy jeans and concave stomach. or on the contrary, maybe he enjoyed the resulting slenderized version of myself. perhaps this was just a part of the assimilation process. regardless, i sent many detailed delirium-heavy emails to my sister at home, and to no surprise, in turn received panicked offers to fed-ex costco boxes of fiber one bars. no really, she would demand, give me the address.

i'm not so sure people quite comprehend what it is like growing up in an italian-american home, with a mother like mine who pushes sponge cakes and cereal bags and jars of nutella and avocados and mangoes upon me as i rush out the door. a total shit show. to go hungry in a home like mine is truly an impossible feat. if you would not be lured by the overflowing cabinets alone, you would have a woman coming at your face with crazy eyes and a wooden spoon filled with tomato sauce. you look emaysheeayted, she would say, mangia! my childhood friend katie spent sunday afternoon with my family and me, in the swimming pool and for the dinner smörgåsbord that ensued. i watched as she happily dined on steamed clams and corn on the cob and baked macaroni, helping herself to seconds and reaching the point where her surviving the meal seemed more of a challenge than a likelihood...as if it was some sort of competitive sport. it's just so good, she said with pain in her eyes, okay, i can do it.