Kindness, compromise and cake
“I’m going inside to get a slice of their red velvet cake.”
“Why?”
“Why not? It looks good and with the exception of your half lemonade, half iced tea drink that wasn’t sweet enough, the food is really good here.”
“That’s a Southern cake. Why do you want that? Well, I guess it would be a good cake since she doesn’t like chocolate.”
A few minutes later the husband (I’m guessing) came out holding a huge brown bag, the kind with handles. They had doubled it for him to support the weight of its contents.
“I got a full cake and a slice for myself. I thought we could get it now for the birthday dinner on Tuesday night when they’re coming up and then that way, we’re done with that errand.”
She (the wife, again, a guess) nodded. They gathered their things for the trash and went off. He carefully loaded the cake into the backseat of the car and away they went. In their wake, I found myself full of questions; what did it matter that the cake, she erroneously believes, has roots in Southern baking? Did she not like the birthday person in general? Guessing she also doesn’t realize the cake is made with cocoa powder, hence rendering it a chocolate cake. Oh well!
Of course, I’ll never know the answers to my questions since running down the street to ask them would be inappropriate at best or worse, rude.
From there my mind went wandering off to no particular location, noticing the flowers and the stillness of the early August afternoon in a town where many people go away for the entire summer. A house finch jumped up on the table, now vacant, looking for crumbs.
In a flash I’m back to the couple, wondering if she perhaps has some early stage of dementia or if she’s just always been a bit opinionated. Again, not the kind of question one would ask perfect strangers on a random weekend afternoon while visiting with a friend at a lovely little spot with excellent lemonade and very good baked treats. My hunch is the onset of some memory issues.
My friend returns from her trip to the W/C and my attention returns to our conversation about books, observations on life and how much life has changed in four years. I tell her the little snippet about the cake and we both spend a moment lost in our own thoughts about cakes and our preferences. My friend, who grew up in World War II England, knows about cakes and their origins; her father was a baker at “one of those places that you might see on Downtown Abbey.” Red velvet cake got its start in Victorian England, as it turns out, rather far away from the Southern United States.
Later, on my drive back, my attention returns again to the couple. I find this happens sometimes, especially when a part of my brain senses a scene is instructive in some way; there is a lesson to be learned if the swirling fog around the it could just clear for a moment. Later still, knee deep in the weeds of the garden, the fog does clear and what there was to see becomes obvious; what was on full display was an act not only of kindness on his part but also of compromise; both seem to be in rather short supply these days.
Kindness and compromise looks different in couples who are of a certain age as opposed to those who have a few less years behind them. What I saw, when viewed through this lens, was a husband who was being attentive and supportive, with an eye on maintaining the forward movement in the moment. There was clear evidence of his making a deliberate choice to, in the words of Jefferson Fisher, an attorney who talks about effective communication, “to take the exit off the highway” leading toward a power struggle.
It is interesting how quickly and ready we are, in general, to pick a fight, press our point, making sure that everyone understands where we’re coming from. Although I am reticent to admit this, the older I’ve gotten, the less tempting it is in most cases* to shout from the rooftops some little bit which I either know or believe to be true, and that obviously, others need to hear from me. “Let me tell you more about red velvet cake!” a younger version of myself might have said as they walked my way to bus their dish basket.
But here’s another not new observation; it’s unlikely that you or I will change someone else’s mind about something. They will either like the cake or they won’t. They will believe the landing on moon was real or they will hold onto a notion it was staged. Logic does not get you too far in these cases. Kindness goes further. Part of what makes our experience through our “one wild and precious life” (Mary Oliver, poet) so rich is how we shape and form our own preferences based on our experiences.
It also seems that increasingly we have a hard time staying in the land of generous, good-natured behaviors – it has become far too common to see the outbursts of frustration. Are we really, as a group, still struggling with the PTSD of an ever shifting world with COVID lingering not too far away? Have we lost touch with the grandparents and other relatives who might have been less accepting of the general poor practices often on exhibit?
I don’t know.
What I do know is kindness and compromise go a long way in nearly every situation. It does not take much, asks little of us and has rich rewards on the other side of an encounter. It’s not always easy to find those traits when if feels as if we’re being treated poorly or put in an awful situation. At the end of the day however it is likely you’ll feel good about how you handled the situation and aren’t finishing the day with a note of regret for what might have been.
All that, and I find myself thinking about the Red Velvet Cake couple as the day ends. I hope the birthday celebration they were anticipating went well, the cake well received with smiles all around. I also hope that you too will have your Red Velvet Cake moment and feel the warm embrace of someone showing you the same kindness and compromise; you deserve nothing less.
*Topics I will shout from the rooftops include the right of women to choose what happens to their bodies and the grave injustices that continue to endanger the lives of people of color and children. Stepping down from my soapbox now…
