Fruitcake

I remember when I was young, sometime in mid-November my mother started collecting ingredients: candied fruit that looked like chopped up gummy bears yet tasted like medicine, cans of glue-like Bordens sweetened condensed milk, and jars of minced meat that had a disturbing resemblance to the aftermath of a lower intestinal illness. All those ingredients plus a few others conspired to become my mother’s famous fruitcake.

I hate fruitcake. So does my mother. Baking it was a sacrifice—a labor of love for all those crazy enough to think it tasted good. And because so many relatives thought my mother’s fruitcake was the finest in the world, she multiplied the recipe it seemed  4 or 5 times. She made a vat-ful. She baked it in all sizes. Loafs and rings flew in and out of the oven all day. But no matter what pan she used, it still tasted like fruitcake to me.

Now one would think that when fruitcake was baking it would at least smell wonderful. Most baked goods do. But I assure you fruitcake does not. No one would ever walk into the kitchen and say mmm are you baking toll house cookies or pie? A baking fruitcake smells like burnt molasses flambéed with rum. It is most unappealing. Noxious is the best word.

And there are some unusual characteristics of the fruitcake too—the first one being that it is a misnomer. There is no cake-part. It is merely yucky stuff held together with a little flour and egg. There is no way you can pick out the stuff you did not like and eat the cake-part—like I do with Irish soda bread (I hate raisins). The other uncanny thing is that fruitcake never dries out, turns rancid or gets moldy. It seems even the spores and bacteria do not like it. Fruitcake baked at Thanksgiving is just as fresh on New Year’s Day. And no matter how much fruitcake gets eaten the supply seemed endless—as if during the night it undergoest mitotic division. Jesus had less success turning water into wine.

And year after year my mother and I would put on out gasmasks and perform our fruitcake chore until finally the audience dwindled down to one—my brother. Every other fan of my mother’s fruitcake  now either lives far away or has passed on.

One year-- soon after my father died-- my mother brought a little piece of fruitcake to my father’s grave. My mother, fully engulfed in sorrow, in between her tears said I hope the squirrels or birds do not eat it. I secretly thought---Are you kidding? Even the squirrels and birds would rather starve first before eating that. But as it was a somber moment I said nothing. I simply hugged my mother and handed her a tissue. Some things are better left unsaid. And some traditions—like fruitcake--- are better left unbaked.