About That Lard Icing Story

Life and food and everything in-between.

I decided to write about lard icing because it doesn’t receive half the praise it should. One way or another everyone has tasted it at least once, usually at some sort of special occasion because it is superb at forming imaginative decorative touches that retain their shapes even under intense ballroom lights. The cake itself is very often dry and bland but it doesn’t matter. It is the fantasy it is encased in and the anticipation of our guilty pleasure in savoring the icing’s redeeming sweetness.

The story followed the preparations for my first holy communion celebration and the big sheet cake my mom ordered for the family party afterwards. The planned narrative would peak at the unveiling of the cake I was allowed to pick for myself, all covered in elaborate white ribbons and pink roses. That was where the story was headed right up to the sixth paragraph when eight short sentences upended things by disclosing the horror that happened to me the week before. I am a fairly private person—you will often find personal details in these stories but they are never intimate. This paragraph revealed something so concealed that not even my husband knew about it and I had every intention to keep it that way.

Now, I sat back from the keyboard, shocked at the paragraph. Where did that come from? What should I do with it? Was it appropriate for a newsletter whose subject matter more or less revolved around food?

It seemed to simply have no place in a harmless story about lard icing.

Then again, it was a critical factor in how I reacted to the icing that day.

The writer who thinks about food a lot of her time decided to cut it. The writer who believes the most important part of her job is to be truthful to a story no matter where it leads her decided to keep it. Fear about revealing it. Fear about not revealing it. Fear about subscribers’ (and husband’s) reaction. Fear that it didn’t matter what they (and my husband) thought.

I did not cut it. The response was almost immediate—kind, supportive, appreciative. A lot of swift subscription cancellations, too.

As for me, telling about the event was not cathartic: it’s been too long a part of who I am to feel relief now and I don’t intend to reveal anything more about it. Except to say that I am pretty proud of how hard an angry eight-year-old girl can throw a cake plate against the wall. If you’re looking for the story’s high point, this moment would be it.

That is the thing about writing: The writer intends to go her way. The story demands to go its own way. The trick is to accept that the story is always right and it has a place in the world.