The Gleit Cake

 It was the first year that I worked for Debbie, and it was the week before . . .

Oh, I guess I should start a bit earlier.

Debbie was the Upper School Director at a Quaker school Not Far From Philadelphia, and I was her secretary. It was a wonderful job: I laughed every single day. Our kids were not yet full-fledged teenagers and this was a preview of the fun (and not-so-fun) stuff that may lie ahead. Anyway, Debbie and I were kind of seamless, finishing each others' sentences with amazing skill and I had become so adept at her signature that . . . well, you get the idea. I never, before or since, had a working relationship like that one. I worked for Debbie (though she had the gift of making me feel like I worked WITH her rather than FOR her) for three or four years before leaving to go to seminary. Debbie's partner, Carol, was my best friend on campus for all those years.

Anyway, it was the week before Christmas break and every morning as the parents dropped their kids off for school, one or two would come in with some kind of a food offering. On Monday when the first one arrived, Debbie told me that there would be a lot of this kind of thing, and I should just take them directly into the faculty room. Okay, got it.

And then came the morning that Margie Gleit came in. She was the mom of a handful of fine young people, all of whom had gone through the Upper School. Stephanie was the last of them; a girl who, as they say, was as beautiful inside as she was outside. Margie was carrying what looked like a chocolate chip Bundt cake which she deposited on my desk with her good wishes for the season.

I was on my way to the faculty room when Debbie popped out of her office. "Oh, no," she said. "THAT doesn't go in there!" She took the cake and I followed her into her office. She cut it evenly in two and wrapped each part up in some foil that had mysteriously appeared. (Could she have known?) "Half for me and Carol and half for you. This is something special." She was right.

Stephanie became a Sophomore and then a Junior and finally a Senior and each year, the week before Christmas, when I'd come home with that foil package my kids would KNOW: "Mom's got the Gleit Cake!"

Not long before Commencement, when Margie was in the office for something or the other, I bumblingly said to her, "Maybe for a graduation present, you could give me the recipe for the cake?" And a couple of days later she appeared with One More to cut in half. AND the recipe.

I only make it at Christmas, and, truth be told, I don't get it made every year. But when I do, look how those wonderful memories come back! 

We've been invited to my niece's for Christmas dinner this year, and I am to bring a dessert. When I told Joe, he said, "Are you going to make a Gleit Cake?" 

Yep.