First let me lay out quickly the scope of the family I'm talking about. Ernie and Mildred (they even have old timey sounding names, right?) are my grandparents, and they had two children; my dad and his sister. Now they both got married and dad had three sons and his sister had three daughters. Just there you'd have twelve in on the festivities. But my cousins (my Aunt's three daughters, if you're a little slow) were all older than me and my brothers and had husbands, boyfriends and some children when I was still a kid myself. So I'd say from about the time I could really remember there were at least two cousin-in-laws (is that what you call them?) and a couple of what I call my little cousins, which are technically second cousins, but hell they're pretty much sisters, so none of these labels really matter. But the number was always higher than that base figure of twelve. Family friends might show up, Grandma's brother, and all sort of other folk. I'd say the normal cake and ice cream would have sixteen to twenty people in attendance.
These weren't just random gatherings, oh no, we were getting together to celebrate special events. And with upwards of twenty people there were plenty of milestones to draw from. Cake and ice cream is a monthly thing, there's at least a couple birthdays or anniversaries in every month and those need to be marked. It rotated from one house to another, Grandma and Grandpa's, our house, my aunt and uncle's, even my cousins' on occasion. There was usually some gift exchange, but that was a far less important factor to the party. It was just getting together, eating and bullshitting with each other.
Calling it 'cake and ice cream' perhaps I should make a note of those two things. So between Grandma, Mom and my Aunt we had three stellar purveyors of sweets. Being honest, none of them were ever too concerned about the look of their confections, but made damn sure they tasted good. My grandma's chocolate sheet cake is one of my favorite things in the world, it ain't fancy, but you can't beat it, you just can't. Occasionally there'd be homemade ice cream, most often my Aunt's creations. Have you had honest to god homemade ice cream? Don't reckon I have to say much more than that.
I've explained this to people before, what cake and ice cream is, and they can't seem to wrap their heads around the concept. Sure get together from time to time, but once a month no way. Then the task is trying to explain that there are much larger events. We have a big Christmas gathering, the same as most folk. That's the big winter celebration. Then in the spring there is the larger Eckles family reunion. It's a week long endeavor, every year (It might be worthy of its own post at some point in the future). There's usually a wedding to bring everyone together in the summer. And then something, like making molasses, in the fall. Yeah, my uncle makes molasses. From raw cane. And we turn it into a party. But these bigger events pull in a bigger crowd, which is awesome, but changes the dynamic.
Basically a way to see 'cake and ice cream' is to imagine it like a regular family eating around the dinning room table one night a week (that's a normal thing, right?). I always felt really close to my cousins growing up and then after I left the country life, as it were, I would meet people and their relationship with their siblings was akin to my relationship to my cousins. And that is what those comforting little get togethers provide, that intimate family connection that gets lost in the regular world. Which has slipped away from me in my wandering days away from our little country homes, in that tiny little corner of the world I come from.
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