It’s my parents anniversary today. Mom had been excited about it since last December, wondering ‘where should we go to celebrate it?’.
The original plan had been for them to come to down and visit me and then we had a wedding to attend the next day. But ever since a nationwide lockdown was announced, trains/flights were cancelled, all of those plans went for a toss.
I had thought of taking them out for dinner to a fancy place and getting them some nice alcohol. Well, that had been flushed down the toilet too. We live over 1000 kilometres apart.
With all the lockdown madness and me trying to work on multiple books on the sides, their looming anniversary was quietly forgotten. That was until last week, when mom casually mentioned it.
“Shit! Mom & Dad’s anniversary is in 10 days, what do we get them?!” I panicked.
Amazon was still not delivering non-essential items that would fall in the ‘gifting’ category. I had thought of getting a nice commissioned portrait for them, but the artist I contacted said it was not possible. There weren’t too many options. For a second I even considered sending them a bunch of masks and hand-sanitizers as gifts.
In the end, I turned to the only good friend I have in the same city as my parents.
“Do you know anybody who can bake a nice cake for my parent’s anniversary?” I asked her.
“Do you have a specific design in mind?” she asked.
I did.
A cake with a nice champagne bottle, that simply said ‘Happy Anniversary Mom & Dad’.
She spoke to a few bakeries that were still running their operations in the city, and turned out that most of them were not taking orders for customized cakes. Only regular bakes.
She then asked me if it was okay if she got it done via somebody she knew.
“As long as they can make a nice tasting cake. It’s fine.”
Finally we got a guy to make a cake that I wanted and he even agreed to do home delivery. It doesn’t seem too bad –
Dad called me up to ask “Are you sure we can eat this cake? The virus doesn’t spread through cakes?”
“Yes, you can eat the cake. A friend of mine got it baked via a trusted friend,” I assured him.
He still made mom put it out in the sun for a while. Then realizing that all the cream would melt and destroy it, he put his paranoia aside and got it placed inside the fridge.
Now I need to start thinking about what to get mom for her birthday, which is in two weeks. Damn.