Circus Cake

Birthday Dream Come True!

When I was 4, I still lived in Berkeley, on McGee Street, near my five cousins. (That mob grew to 14!)

My aunt Frannie had three boys— Ty, Johnny, and Jimmy— and she was my favorite of all my elders. Frannie would paint my nails pink and tell me how fun it would be to have a little girl. I ate this stuff up! My mom was not “girly” — no polish, no pink!

Frannie on the left, and my mom, Elizabeth on right, in Cologne in early 50s. My dad was stationed there, and Frannie came to visit.

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For my 4th birthday, Frannie talked Betty Jo, (my mom’s family nickname), into throwing a party for me even though my mother thought children’s parties were ridiculous. This was B.J. being part-beatnik, part-“don’t-put-on-airs” Catholic, part-“who-has-the-money-for-this-crap.”

But Frannie’s enthusiasm and “charge it!” bravado was contagious. The other sisters vetoed my mom: Aunt Molly, Auntie Pid, Aunt Tessie.

Franny got me a the so-called “circus cake” from the legendary (long shuttered) Berkeley’s Eclair Pastries on Telegraph Boulevard— yes, the bakery with the floor to ceiling glass windows that never got trashed during the 60s riots. They were the only business the protestors spared.

My cousins and I had stared at this very cake through the pastry window a million times. It was an exact miniature of a merry-go-round, with all the little animal figurines.

Seeing my auntie set the cake on our red card table, in the single apartment we lived in on McGee Street, was the first time I remember being thrilled out of my mind.

It was as if, by looking at the cake, I was riding all the horses and singing to the music, the calliope. It was like being at the Tilden Park merry-go-round. I transported myself.

The thrill before I got in trouble

When the cake-cutting began, I reached out for the first piece, my moment of triumph. But my hand never got to the plate.

My mom boxed my ears in front of all my cousins. “You are the host,” she cried, “you are the last to get a piece!”

Ty and Johnny quickly moved in for the slice.

What terrible hot tears and shame. I dreamed of that cake over and over again, not how it tasted, but my fantasy that the ponies were going up and down and I was in the middle of it all.

55 years later or so...

I housesitting our friend Nancy Stoller’s place. I found a frilly little merry-go-round music box sitting on her desk, unlike anything else in her house. Nancy, like my mom, is not the “pink” type!

Nancy had taken my sweetheart aside earlier, and told him to surprise me! It was a present for me, something she’d found in her childhood storage.

Next up, I took the photograph you see here. The figurine is beautiful and lights up in pastels as it plays a waltz every time you wind the spring.

It was the “happy birthday ending” I didn’t enjoy before. I LOVE YOU NANCY. Ponies and femmes and pink, pink, pink, forever.

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