Have your cake..and eat it!

Its Saturday afternoon..I love Saturdays...if you are married to a church minister,as I am, Saturdays can be a bit of a busy day, at least for him.
However well you get on in the week there are always final preparations and the sermon to finish. Having lived with this, and him, for rather a long time now, I am resigned to Saturdays being much less of a going out and family sort of a day and more of a doing what I want to do sort of a day.
Saturday is the only day in our house when we can usually get up a little later, when we can sit around a little longer at breakfast and then wonder why it is mid-day already! Saturday is getting the shopping done and buying the all important newspapers. I have an addiction to Saturday papers, namely the Irish Times, whilst he loves the Telegraph.
The Saturday paper has all the weekend extras and the colour supplement that shows me recipes I shall never make,restaurants I could frequent and clothes I most certainly will never wear,( even if I would quite like to!) I read the snippets of places to visit and exhibitions happening in Dublin but rarely attend, keep up with columns about people I feel I know but who don't know me, I even read the obituaries and become sad that such interesting people are no longer with us even though in life I often didn't know they existed! Often I read the lists of Sunday Church Services, I can check the Presbyterians and see who of our colleagues has a visiting preacher and wonder if they are on holiday!
Another aspect of Saturdays , within the busyness of sermon preparation, time is found to watch football or rugby, not me I hasten to add but my dear minister husband. Even if I don't watch I have come to appreciate the cheering crowds and noises of exasperation or jubilation that come from the armchair on Saturday afternoons.
When all this is happening, if I do not have the service sheets to type, though I usually do or a Sunday school lesson to prepare which may get left to the evening... I go to the kitchen and cook. Something about Saturdays, something about reading about others doing things in the paper, something about the homeliness of every ones weekend inspires me to want to bake.
Sometimes I have to cook, we have people coming round, but when there is no particular reason then its so much more fun. Eggs and flour and vanilla essence, I am probably the most unorganised cook and soon the kitchen is filled with wonderful smells and a trail of cooking ingredients. We have shortbread, we have cake, tins are filled and dinners prepared..for no particular reason..except Saturday...
Then the phone rings and someone shouts 'you get it' 'it will be him' and sure enough it is..
Every Saturday at 5 or 6 or 7 and if he doesn't we ask ourselves..'He hasn't phoned, do you think he's OK?'
we chat, he's done this and that, nothing really, nothing much, got a bit lonely, went for a walk, sat in the park, back in the bed sit now...
Then we tell him what we've done
'is he not takin ye out' he asks...and I always say 'no, it's Saturday..'
'oh, right enough' he says
'..but I made cake' I say 'what for?' says he
'no particular reason' I say 'but I'll bring you some to church tomorrow'
'I'd love that' says he,'I'll try to be there early but you know how it is..'
and I know how it is... we finish our Saturday.

Sunday is Sunday.
I cut up some cake and wrap it in tin foil.
It is our tenth anniversary at this church, two weeks ago but it takes time to get 'things together'
They want to give us a presentation, 'there's cake downstairs Ruth' whispers a small boy in Sunday School. There's the embarrassing rigmarole of presentations in front of everyone that comes to me as 'ministers wife', and our children as 'ministers kids' and my husband as 'the Minister'...
and a cake to cut in white icing and plastic flowers and splendidly gooey cream...
In all the commotion a familiar figure, who wasn't there for the whole service but arrives for the end, shakes my hand...'I brought you cake' I say, it almost seems absurd as I look around at everyone sharing the carefully cut celebration cake.
I hand him the tin foil package and he holds it in his hands. we chat, again.
I watch him go..
My 'no particular cake' has become 'very particular cake'.
Finally all the people leave and the rest of the celebration cake is lifted into its shop box and given...to me, to us,
'have your cake, Ruth'...