Tokens of Spring

Baking a cake this morning for Daughter's upcoming birthday party, I was suddenly reminded of a particular springtime picnic undertaken when I was still in high school. My best friend since forever came over to my house, and together we fried chicken, made a giant chocolate layer cake from scratch, complete with homemade chocolate icing, bottled up lemonade, packed plates and silverware and strawberries and napkins and a giant blanket on which to sit.

It must have taken us three or four solid hours to prepare that picnic. And it was picnic perfection.

We went out the the Emory President's Park -- 50-odd acres of rolling hills, groomed grass, a pond, a decrepit stone "Rapunzel" tower, and giant shade trees. We trekked in (no motor vehicles allowed), carrying our stores, and spread out on the sunny side of a hill. We spent the whole afternoon nibbling slowly, talking incessantly, moving our blanket periodically as the lengthening shadows of giant oaks threatened to throw us into a chill. Foot by foot, we kept our blanket in the weak early sun, boldly exposing our winter-pale legs in shorts, timidly wrapping our upper bodies in the long-sleeved shirts we were grateful to have brought.

I have some dim idea that probably her two younger sisters and my two ditto were also there. Clearly, she and I could not eat an entire layer cake alone, even at sixteen, when we were astonishingly capable of packing away vast quantities of food belied by our rail-thin selves, so I am quite sure we must have had help. But in my memory, it is just her and me. The two of us, laughing, eating, relishing the springtime and our friendship.

Nearly every time I make this chocolate cake (the recipe on the back of the Hershey's cocoa tin, if you are curious), I think of that day, the day that forever established in my mind that the only "correct" foods for a picnic were homemade fried chicken and chocolate cake, with lemonade to drink. Now, more than 20 years later, those foods for me are the picnic ideal.

Looking around my neighborhood right now, I have picnics on the brain, as we are just getting the hint of springtime in the air. The crocus, brave enough poke up through the snow before it is all gone, are blooming, and the daffodils are still at least a week or two away. But the weeping willows, ah! First trees to cloak themselves in a mist of green each year, their long hair-like tendrils are covered now in pale, celery colored buds. From afar, the buds of each narrow leaf do not resemble what they will become; they are merely the promise of leaves, as if someone took a winter charcoal drawing of a tree, and gave it a light water-color wash of green. But I know what it means: springtime and flowers are around the corner. Picnics are not far off.

In celebration, I made a little garden of cupcakes today.


And while there is as yet too much chill in the air to sit on the still-thawing ground to eat a meal, I am sure that tonight, I will dream of picnics.

Wherever you are, I hope your spring has sprung too.