Red velvet cake and red-hot tears: the rest of the story.

We didn't really think I was that magnanimous, did we? 

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The night before I took my one-way flight to Switzerland last year, my family threw a little party in my honor. My sister made, from scratch, the best – and reddest – red velvet cake I’d ever eaten. Definitely the reddest. 

I was given a mixer for Christmas; any self-respecting Swiss housewife (more on that another day) should have one. I put it to work immediately and baked every day for the next week. Given the festivities of the season, it wasn’t difficult to find willing eaters. I found a recipe for red velvet cupcakes and decided to make them for a celebration of the arrival of the New Year we misguidedly thought would be our best ever. Cupcakes are a new thing here (my favorite line from that article: “There is also uncertainty about when one should eat a cupcake, with one bakery recommending it for breakfast.” Yeah, and?), and I thought red ones would be even more of a novelty.

Well, my cupcakes tasted good. Only problem was they weren’t red, more like a muddy brown. I called my sister for advice. 

“How much red food coloring did the recipe ask for?”

“Two tablespoons.”

“No, no, no,” she laughed. “You need to dump the whole bottle in.” 

“Shoot. I can’t afford it then. Do you have any idea how much food coloring costs in this country?!”

***

I called her last Sunday night.

I wrote about it Monday morning.  

On Tuesday, I found a parcel waiting for me in the mailbox. From her. Containing a box of red velvet cake mix and a tub of cream cheese frosting. Twenty-five bucks in shipping fees to send me a little taste of home, properly colored. 

Wednesday I got the call (and the emails, and the Facebook postings, and the messenger pigeons …) that the baby was here. 

None of which I have answered. 

Every time I walk into the kitchen and see that box of cake mix, I stop and double over and cry.

***

I joined a gym recently. I went to a spinning class yesterday and took a bike in the back of the room so nobody would see the tears that I couldn’t stop from trailing down my face. It wasn’t the first time I’ve cried in the back of that room. At the end of the session, for the stretching, the instructor changed the music to something gentler. Adele. The theme of the song doesn’t relate at all to my situation, but if the instructor hadn’t been singing along, loudly and merrily off-key, destroying all sentimentality of the lyrics, I would have howling like a baby at these words: 

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I heard that your dreams came true …

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For me it isn’t over …

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I wish nothing but the best for yoooouuuuu ….

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And I do. 

***

But, forgive me, I can’t stop thinking, What about me?