Momnesia

Mama Ida was a real smart lady

Smell is our most powerful sense, according to scientists. It's the first sense that we develop - babies can smell their parents before they can see them clearly - and it's the sense that brings back the most visceral memories. Since taste is 90% smell, food is an incredible storyteller in a person's life.

I have fond memories of coconut cream cake, my favorite. My great-grandmother used to make a coconut cream layer cake about every time we came to visit. She would put each minute of her 75 years of cooking and baking into that cake. It was always deliciously savored after a big Southern Sunday Dinner (which non-Southernors call "lunch). God love Mama Ida, but I found one better.

Very Vera is a catering company off Washington Road with a small cafe, gourmet casseroles, and a thriving mail-order cake division. Touring their facilities today, I saw red velvet cakes, strawberry layer cakes, choco-latte (mocha flavored) layer cakes, a variety of pound cakes... you name it, it was there. But Kyle, the cafe manager, had a suprise for me: "I cut a slice of coconut cream cake just for you," he said.

Oh, Kyle. My new best friend.

Ya'll, I'm not one to gush unless something deserves it, and I will say that since I usually eat sugar free everything, the slice of cake was on the too-rich-for-my-blood side of the sweetness scale. But my childhood memories of the Cedertown house Mama Ida bought when she sold the farm came flooding back. The cast-iron clothes iron that served as her kitchen doorstop. The expanse of flecked Formica countertops that stretched from one end of the kitchen to the other. Finally, the wall that separated the kitchen from the dining area. On the back side of this wall was a series of shelves. On the bottom shelf sat Mama Ida's glass cake case. In the case... oh, baked heavan.

Mama Ida was a humble woman, a farmer's good Christian wife, who usually wore a button-up patterned polyester shirtdress and always had an apron on over it. She kept her grey hair in a bun, and was hard of hearing. She called the seafood fast food place, "John Long Silver's" and pronounced pizza as "pie-zah." She thought the moon landing was staged. She was patient, kind and wise, but knew her limitations, and never took offense when we bratty great-grandchildren found comical her octogenarian ways. But the woman got much respect in the kitchen. Scratch biscuits kneaded by hand. Beans slow simmered with pork seasoning. Mashed potatoes fluffy like a cloud. Roast beef so tender it would melt in your mouth. And, again, that cake.

But the cake from Very Vera would make Mama Ida want to slap herself it was so good.

I am a person divided over this cake. Part of me is sorry that I tried it. It destroyed a closely-held childhood memory of the Greatest Cake Ever. Part of me is happy I found something that comes even close to matching it. It gave me some nearly tangible part of my childhood. But all of me is certain that I'll be back for more cake at Very Vera's, particularly when I'm feeling down or childlike, as though The Great Big World is ready to swallow little ol' me.

Sometimes we have to go back to go forward.