by Annie Eitman

Created on: July 25, 2008

My dear, departed, diabetic Nana used to bake for us grandkids. A lot. Sounds wonderful, doesn't it? The first dozen times or so it was. After that - no. No. NO. Every day. Every damn day. It was like the movie Groundhog Day only with Bundt cakes.

We'd come home from school, the witching hour for kiddie appetites, and she'd appear with a big ring of dry cake. She'd parade right past my mother, who would be preparing dinner, often within reach of sharp kitchen utensils. "Have some cake," Nana would say to us, which is Gaelic for If you love me you will eat this now or I will die and it will be your fault.

She would then sit down and stare at us, waiting for us to eat. Our mom, knife at the ready, would stare daggers at us, then at Nana. Our stomachs would growl at us. There was no way out without some sort of home-baked Irish angst.

Nana: I made you a cake.

Mom (staring icily at us): What a surprise.

Nana: Well, I had nothing better to do.

Mom (eyeing the paring knife):thanks.

Nana (heavy sigh): Guess I'll go home and watch 'The Price is Right.' Alone.

I took up sports just so I wouldn't have to come home right after school and witness this scene.

The flip side to this logic was if you truly valued food, you took only what you needed. A daily dose of Bundt cake was a loony extravagance. Eventually I began to associate cakes and sweets with an uneasy maternal glare. While it later made dieting easy, I absolutely freaked out in bakeries.

Nana lived next door to us on the farm, close enough to tinker with our lives but far enough away to duck the house rules. She had lived through the Great Depression and treasured every bit of food she now had. As a result, she was quite fat and suffered from diabetes. Not to judge her, but no matter how hard she stared at me, she was not going to make me eat Bundt cake until I weighed 200 pounds.

She was born in Brooklyn of Irish immigrants, living there all her life until her husband, my Pop-pop, passed away, at which point she moved in beside us in the country, with the cows, crickets, and velvet-dark, quiet nights. Many things I loved about the country probably terrified her.

City folk don't ever get to know true darkness. Or silence, for that matter. There's always something lit or noisy. Like a street light or a trash truck beeping away, I guess that's comforting if that's what you know.

But in the night of the countryside your eyes don't always help you and your ears pop for lack of better things to do. To me this was magnificent -

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