For someone of my age this may seem an overly dramatic statement: I am losing my memory.
For the record, I am 46, born in 1971, so just a shade away from 47 which is officially the late 40s but I don’t really care.
What I care about is that I cannot remember things.
Part of this is a car accident when I was 16. I can remember THAT: staring up through the spiderweb of the windshield, one leg on the driver’s side of my dream car, my 1971 refurbished Volkswagen Bug, the emergency brake raking open a long, bloody seam up the back of my left thigh, and the rest of me in the passenger side. An EMT with a shaky voice, tending to a cut on my head, saying, “It’s fine. You’ll be fine,” and then nothing until the vision of my mother storming through the curtains in the ER, brusque: “You’re fine. You’ll be fine.”
The doc, several weeks later, telling me that my memory would be affected forever by the early trauma to the frontal lobe.
Part of this is other trauma in childhood, some of which I remember and am addressing with My Therapist, some of which I believe is so deeply buried that the excavation itself would cause trauma.
Fast forward decades, when this – this memory loss thing – wasn’t really an issue, to now, when it has suddenly become one.
I can’t remember shit.
Not the funny, old-timer CRS (Can’t Remember Shit) disease.
Whole swathes of my life, gone with no real understanding of what happened or where they went.
Me in a formal dress next to a boy in formal dress: no idea the occasion or the boy.
Yesterday – what I did, where I was.
Some of this can be attributed to the lifestyle of a freelance writer. I have only one real standing appointment every week; otherwise, the days are all meaningless, fabricated markers of time. Other of this can be blamed on my Ayurvedic dosha – vata – which has me consuming large quantities of information and then promptly forgetting it.
But this loss of memory is distressing.
I can’t remember significant events in my life, events that make me the person who I am. Events that have forged relationships with people I love.
The thing that has saved me in many ways is my friends.
In my head, I call them the Keeper of Records.
I have friends who have known me for forty years- they have a grave responsibility to recall the child that they thought I was to the adult I am now.
I have friends who have only known me since this move back to Baltimore in 2014. They have less responsibility, perhaps, but they also have less invested in me. Perhaps they will grow weary of reminding me of their important dates, or nudging me towards our shared memories that are even now, just these few years on, receding.
It’s hard to go on record like this. It feels like failure.
And nothing soothes that feeling better than baking, and eating, cake.
Full disclosure: I have never before eaten Smith Island cake.
#Shocking
As a native Marylander, this is also something of a failure, but I choose to let this one go. I am letting it go because as I type this I am having a big slice for breakfast, which means not only am I not a failure in the long run, but I am also a fucking grownup who can eat cake for breakfast if I feel like it.
Plus, as I was researching this recipe I found out that the one lady on Smith Island who is super famous for her “authentic” Smith Island cake uses BOXED CAKE MIX.
GTFO. That’s just DUMB.
So I looked deeper and found the “original” recipe from Frances Kitching, an innkeeper on Smith Island who is believed to have created this iconic cake. This lady is the real deal; from her linked obituary, she delivers gems like:
“The best thing you can do to a crab is let it be. Clean it, fry it, and watch that it doesn’t pop in the skillet and burn your arm.”
And, when someone asked if they could keep their beer cold in her fridge while they ate:
“You’d be the first. I have simply turned down some people who appeared to have been drinking when they came here to eat. They were in no condition to enjoy and appreciate good cooking.”
The New York Times even stopped by her inn in 1979 to write a story about her. The article is notable in its description of not only the meal the writer enjoyed but also in the beauty of the descriptions of life on Smith Island.
In 2008, Smith Island cake became Maryland’s state dessert. You will note in the description that in order to be a Smith Island cake proper, flavor doesn’t matter, but the number of layers does: between eight and 12 is the standard.
So don’t look too closely at the picture above (hint: mine only has six, but in my defense I was feeling a little woozy when I made this AND it’s my first one AND I am not actually particularly fond of crepe cakes, which is what it begins to be when you have too many layers, so BACK OFF).
Never you mind the layers. I am calling it a Smith Island cake that cannot count. The next one will come correct.
But in the meantime, back away from the boxed cake mix and use Frances Kitchings’ own recipe, as I did. I subbed out my gluten-free all-purpose flour blend, and it was, as usual, spot-on.
And also, for those of you following along at home, this little thing happened:
Chad and I have been working on The Food Market {at Home} for nine months (my name is on the inside: “Written with Suzannah Kolbeck”), and it came out on Black Friday. You can order it online, or you can get it at either of his two restaurants, The Food Market in Hampden and La Food Marketa up in the county. I am not shilling this because I make any cash on the deal (I don’t), but it’s a nice big deal, and I am proud of the work.
There is even a recipe for Smith Island cake in here, Chad’s interpretation with a crazy good strawberry-flavored whipped cream cheese filling, microbasil, strawberry dust, and dehydrated strawberries. You, too, can get fancy at home (without too much fuss – seriously).