Melinda Morley

Year-round school has its benefits. And drawbacks. Every few, random (at least it feels random) months you get three weeks off from school. Sometimes, like in November, your kids are sick for two of the three weeks and it feels like anything but a vacation. Other times, like February, it is Arctic Cold outside and there are few places to go outside of the Wasatch Front that are not risky i.e. bad roads, winter storm warnings, etc. Though we braved a trip to Teton Valley and actually squeezed in between two major storms -no small miracle there. We are on vacation now. Which is great for the next three weeks and lousy for the entire month of June that we will spend in school. But that’s life, right?

On Sunday after church we started our vacation off right by booking it down to Anasazi Girl’s house. It was delightful. The kids happily played with cousins and A. Girl treated us to wonderful meals and cake. Not just any run of the mill Betty Crocker mix-from-a-box, mind you, this was the real deal. A Costco fifty-pounder. All-American Chocolate Cake. I’m not making this up. You elite Costco card members know what I am talking about. The cake of all cakes, that you want to buy but never dare. Such richness, such chocolate decadence, such wholly irreverence to anything remotely healthy. The temptation fills your soul and you turn away thinking, “I probably couldn’t lift it into the cart anyway.”

But even days later you are thinking about that cake: how moist and succulent and how a single morsel of it would melt into ecstasy on your tongue. Now, how dry your whole wheat toast is. How unsatisfiying the juice used to wash down that toast that scratches your throat. Your wardobe reverts to one single color: chocolate. (I am not speaking from experience here. Really. Gheesh!) You try to tide yourself over with pitiful waxy chocolate bars left over from Halloween -that was eight months ago. But it won’t do. Nothing will suffice. Nothing to relieve the constant yearning. Until you have a family gathering. That is, if your family is able to throw caution to the wind and risk a thrown out back. They have mercy. They have brought you the cake of your dreams. It is useless to resist. Eat as much as you can and make yourself sick. Sick enough that you never want a piece again. It’s your only hope for the future. Your only cure.

Just think if we were able to gather all the world leaders together, Bin Laudin and all, at a huge table and served them mountainous portions of All American Chocolate Cake. Imagine the multilayered sweetness filling every sorry soul with joy. They would go home and feed it to their people. There would be world-wide peace and love. -That must have been Reagan’s secret weapon. “Gorbachev tear down that wall! …and have a piece of All American Chocolate Cake while your at it.”