Have a Chocolate Cake Day

They sat in silence just looking at one another. Thomas was sitting on the light brown leather couch, and his therapist, Dr. Lillian Burkett, was in her turquoise and beige floral print winged-back chair. She shifted slightly, doing her best to remain patient.

“Can you repeat the question?” Thomas asked.

Lillian’s face remained neutral.

“If you had to sum up all of your life experiences in one word, what would it be?”

“Seriously? One word?” He leaned forward on the couch and rested his elbows on his knees. She looked at him, waiting.

He let out a whoosh of air and sat back against the couch, slouching. He shook his head slowly. “Chocolate Cake,” he said.

“Really? I ask you for one word that sums up your life and you give me chocolate cake?”

“Oh, sorry. That’s two words.” he said.

“That’s not what I am referring to and you know it, Thomas.” She looked at him pointedly. “This is a legitimate question, and I would appreciate a legitimate answer.”

“It is a legitimate answer,” Thomas countered, raising his voice. “That’s the first thing that came into my head, and you would understand if you knew.”

“So help me understand how chocolate cake is your word of choice to describe your life experiences.”

“Look,” He said, sitting at the edge of the couch again. “Anything big in my life—good or bad—always came with chocolate cake.” She waited for him to continue.

“Starting from my childhood and my Grandma. We talked about this before. My Mom, she really wasn’t there for me when I was a kid. My Grandma basically raised me. My earliest memory of my Grandma was how she would distract me while my mother was having one of her ‘spells.’ Today they probably would’ve diagnosed her with bipolar with depression or something like that. But back then, my grandma called them spells. They could go on for days, but anyway. Let me get back to the chocolate cake. When this was happening with my mother, my Grandma would take me into the kitchen, and we would bake a chocolate cake. Well, she would mostly, I’d get to lick the bowl. Chocolate cake, she said, made everything better. And to some extent, she was right.”

“Go on,” she prompted.

“When I think about all the milestones in my life, there was chocolate cake. My first kiss, getting my driver’s license, but not just the happy stuff.”

“Tell me about your first kiss. How did chocolate cake figure into that?” She asked.

Thomas smiled at the thought of this, and warmed up to the idea of sharing the story. “It was Regina Mayhew’s twelfth birthday party. It was also our first boy/girl party. You know what I mean like spin the bottle and all that. Anyway, we had just sung happy birthday and eaten the birthday cake which as luck would have it was chocolate. Well, right after that, we go play Seven Minutes in Heaven. You know what that is, right?” He asked.

“Yes. Go on,” she urged.

“So Regina goes first, and she picks me. We went into the closet, and she plants one on me, and she tasted just like chocolate cake. I thought I died and really did go to heaven.” Thomas smiled at the memory.

“You mentioned not just the happy times came with chocolate cake. Can you talk about that?” Lillian asked.

Thomas leaned back and seemed to be sorting through memories in his head. Finally, he sat forward again and spoke.

“When I was about, I don’t know, 24 or 25, my Grandpa got Alzheimers. We had to put him in a home. And the night before he went, we had a big family dinner, and my Grandma made him a chocolate cake. And when I’d go visit him, sometimes he wouldn’t remember me, but he always remembered Grandma’s chocolate cake.”

Lillian nodded. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”

Thomas shifted on the couch. He looked down at the table in front of him.

“I got a lot of stories like that.” He said. “We had chocolate cake when I graduated from both highschool and college. We had chocolate cake at my wedding, chocolate cake at my Grandma’s funeral, and chocolate cake on the days my children were born. My sister bought me a chocolate cake on the day my divorce decree came in the mail. Not to celebrate, but to try to make me feel better. Chocolate cake made good things great and bad things better. So, you see Doc. I took your question very seriously.” Thomas said. “When I look back at my life, I see a lot of chocolate cake.”

“I get it now,” she said. “Thank you for helping me to understand.”

Thomas shrugged his shoulders as if to say don’t worry about it.

“Did you ever learn to make your grandmother’s chocolate cake?” She asked.

“No,” Thomas said quietly. “I have her recipe card though, written in her handwriting. I don’t even keep it in the kitchen. I have it in a drawer in my bedroom.”

“Why is that, do you think?” She asked.

“I don’t know,” Thomas said. “But talking about all of this made me remember something else. When my daughter was little, I would say to her everyday before she left for school, ‘Have a chocolate cake day.’ And she would say ‘you too Daddy.’ And we both knew exactly what we meant.”

“That if it was a good day, make it great. If it was a bad day, make it better,” Lillian said with a slight smile.

“Yeah, that’s right. You got it, Doc.” Thomas said, smiling and nodding.

“Well, that’s our time for today, Thomas.” She stood. “I’ll see you next week.”

Thomas stood to go. He paused at the door.

“Hey Doc,” he said, turning to look back at her. “Until then, you have a chocolate cake week.”

She smiled. “I will. You too, Thomas.”