Salty Sweet

birthdays, anniversaries, endings and beginnings

Crushed Reece’s Pieces cake detail - the ultimate of salty sweetness

The back door of our house is full of shoes - cleats, slides, running sneakers, sandals and work boots. Next week two boys are leaving for university and the scene will have thinned a little. The kitchen will be quieter, there won’t be bacon fat splattered over the stove, the eggs won’t run out so quickly and the floor of the laundry room will be visible again. It’s the beginning of new things, it’s the end of others, and I am teetering somewhere in the middle of it all. To soften the transition I made a big, towering birthday cake for my youngest, the one staying behind. It was a chocolate cake layered with fluffy peanut butter icing and coated in crushed Reese’s Pieces¹ - a break from his usual chocolate cake lathed with Kit Kat bars. He blew out fifteen candles as the sun began to set on August. 

A few nights later James and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. Twenty-five is the silver anniversary - strong, unbreakable and radiant. We rode the ferry to a dinner date in Dartmouth that night, crossing over the same body of water where we first met all those years ago. We are strong, radiant, slightly tarnished, but unbreakable.

Back in June, before I was tangled up in end of summer transitions, I wrote a poem² about the first time I met James. But I see now that the poem is also about beginnings and endings, and that sweet spot where we teeter in between. 

Salty Sweet

Before the days of googling,

when you had to ask friends about a boy,

I was the girl on the pool deck, with a baby on my hip

wearing a bathing suit and a WHAM! t-shirt, damp from the 

diaper laden with pool water

squishing against my side. 

This was before Snapchat, when a girl had to walk to where 

the pool bordered the ocean, 

where sailboats were tethered to buoys, just to see him. 

His tanned face streaked in salt

from a morning tipping his boat into the water. 

Yellow hair, brown eyes,

an orange life jacket. 

Watching him, while the mother watched me, 

from her perch across the crowded pool, 

through the women in rubber bathing caps 

that fastened under the chin,

the leathery ladies on loungers, 

the teens on towels, 

the ice cream cones, 

the lifeguard who wore a bikini under her one piece suit, 

and rolled it down on her break 

to suntan on a picnic table. 

The baby was cold, she later said, keep him wrapped up.

I was thirteen that summer.

I pushed the baby in the Silver Cross,

with his three older sisters dripping off the sides. 

I towelled them off after swimming lessons,

sprayed their hair with detangler, combed, braided,

sliced apples,

bounced the baby on my hip.

Their mother taught me how to change his diaper,

how to scoop peas with a baby spoon,

and finish with apple sauce for sweetness. 

She had had surgery and couldn’t lift her baby,

and I had said yes, I would help. 

A summer at the pool by the ocean, 

between childhood and crushes,

splashing in the water,

sliced red peppers

and rice cakes with peanut butter,

hanging towels on the line, 

and friends on the pool deck, 

and the salty boy on the sailboat.

It would be years before we’d kiss,

but that’s how I met him, 

leaning against the wall between the ocean and the pool,

with a baby on my hip, and a diaper

squishing against my side.

1. For the birthday cake I used Smitten Kitchen’s chocolate cake from this recipe (thank you Sally B!) and substituted in this frosting instead of Smitten Kitchen’s ganache and cream cheese peanut butter frosting. I can’t push sophistication on the birthday boys in my house. Maybe someday.

2. Thanks to

Molly Wizenberg

for introducing me to Dorian Laux’s poetry. The poem above was inspired by Laux’s poem Fast Gas.