Mac and I were kindergarten best friends. Our favorite game was making Lego cars to zoom over the edge of the second floor balcony at his house and watching gleefully as they crashed into pieces on the sidewalk below. His mom found out about our game the hard way when she walked out barefoot to get the mail, stepping on the pieces. She looked up to see us giggling on the balcony, and to tempt us down offered us a piece of her Secret Recipe Cheesecake. It was, just as she’d promised, “divine.”
I moved away and didn’t see him for years, until we met again at a church dance, falling into a renewed friendship that became a high school romance. He played football for our rival high school and I was on the drill team, so our time together was limited, but his mom, Merrie, loved me. She saw in me the little girl who raced cars and she was my friend. For my birthday, she made her cheesecake and we ate it on the balcony. She gave me the recipe as my gift, but told me, in a confidential but convincing tone, that if we ever broke up, I was to tear it into tiny pieces and destroy it. We did and I didn’t.
Years later, Merrie called me out of the blue and after a few minutes of catching up, asked desperately if I still had the recipe. She had lost her only copy (this was before computer recipe files were a thing). I pulled out my stained copy, in her handwriting complete with a faded birthday cake sticker, and read it out to her. We laughed and agreed it was a good thing I hadn’t destroyed it, and a good thing we were friends.
During Harvey, Merrie’s house flooded. She had lived there since 1970, and the water went all the way to the ceiling of the first floor. To get out, a boat had to come up to the balcony. She lost everything, including her photographs and recipes. I hadn’t seen her for a long time, but heard through friends that she was staying with her son. I asked him if I could bring her a cheesecake. It seemed like the right thing to do. He said she’d love it, and in fact, it was her birthday. When I arrived, she was uncharacteristically quiet, stunned by all that has happened. She will not be going back to her house and she knows it now. Her sad eyes brightened just a bit as she recognized her cheesecake. We talked for a bit about the flood, neighbors and friends we know and how they fared. Then we ate the cheesecake together, mostly quiet, each lost in our own thoughts–of time, of water, and how it all floods past until all that is left are moments like these, with only memories of the balcony.
