Precious False Memories

Me, and my first birthday cake.

I was working on a column this week for my paper about a cake decorating class I took. I asked my mom to bring my baby photo albums with her when she came to visit me so I could get a photo of my first birthday cake to run with the column.

I remember the cake distinctly: It was a panda bear. In the photo, I'm sitting in a high chair in our backyard, with the cake in front of me.

The major problem: That's Scotty in that photo, not me.

"You're going to be disappointed," Mom said as I flipped through my baby album, searching for a picture of my first birthday cake.

My first cake came in a beat-up rectangular 9x13 pan. It doesn't even have my name written on it, just a lonely candle. I'm crying in the picture.

I had to rewrite part of my column.

"You could just leave the story in there," Mom suggested. I'd like to. Everyone involved would feel better about it.

It makes me wonder — how many of my precious memories aren't real?

For a good portion of my life, I believed we bought our old blue VW Vanogan in front of a bar, instead of at the dealership. I have no idea where this memory came from, but I have it. My brother thinks I dreamed it. Knowing the vibrancy of my dreams, he's probably right. But I ran on this one for years.

I wonder about what memories my own children will someday falsify, and if I'll have a hand in it. For years I've loved to look at our childhood baby photo albums, and the memories of my mom's fabulous shape-cakes, combined with the presence of those pans in our cupboards for years, made me just sure she must have created one of those cakes for me.

Nope. "I was tired by the time you got around, honey." she said. And I did have a penchant for commercialism that let her get away with "Little Mermaid" cakes from the grocery store bakery.

Somewhere in there is a lesson about being the unloved third child, the one for whom the parents don't dote upon or have time for.

Bu that's B.S. I was the only girl, and upon I was plenty doted. My mom was just efficient, and wise enough to know that I was more thrilled with the Disney-licensed Ariel on top of my cake than I would have been with a mermaid-shaped cake. I kept that cake topper for years.

So perhaps the lesson in there is that I too easily bought into commercialism.

Or perhaps the only lesson is we put a pretty high-gloss shine on those childhood memories. Reviewing the baby book tonight, I found that in probably 1/5 of my pictures, I'm crying. In the others I'm looking friggin' adorable and happy as can be.

So obviously the lesson is that I've been an emotional basketcase from the beginning. No wonder my mom didn't have the energy to make me fancy cakes.