Of Funfetti Cakes and My Daughter.....

Yesterday, in search for the miscellaneous stuff on my "get list", I ended up at Bartell Drugstore. My "get list" stuff in hand, I waited at the checkout counter and watched the woman ahead of me. She and her two little daughters, all of four and six years old (I'm guessing) were as cute as buttons. They were buying cake mixes, two to be exact and one was a Funfetti Cake mix.

They weren't in a rush; they were happy to just be, right there in the store living the moments. The woman had a lot of change in her purse and since these cake mixes were on sale for 88 cents, she was able to pay for the two cake mixes with coins. The young girls, probably excited by the prospect of an afternoon of baking and decorating, walked out of the store each with a cake mix in hand.

Time stopped for me, for the briefest moment. The observer, I watched and remembered back to a time when my own were this age. Laura's favorite cake for many years was a Funfetti white cake, infused with multi-colored sweet tidbits. How many Birthdays did we celebrate with this cake as the centerpiece? I could see her, standing beside me at the same checkout counter, close, exuding the same excitement that I saw in those two young girls. A flashback to a very ordinary moment from my past, I was overtaken by a surprising sense of mystery and magic, a feeling that although time sweeps me forward, I'm left with sweet and tender memories that remind me that I was once that young mother with children in tow.

And then my thoughts turned to Ms. Laura with less than a month to go on her sojourn abroad. I ache to put my arms around her and to hold her close again. The Funfetti Cake, the little girl who became a young woman while I was thinking and doing other things, the bittersweet of life, the tremendous gift we are given to love and be loved in this one life.....

One thought into the next.