This I Believe

I believe in strawberry frosted cupcakes- the kind that necessitates the addition of sprinkles, or gummy worms, or Oreo cookie crumbs. I believe in dress up, stuffed animal tea parties, and play dough. I believe that a spoonful of juvenility is a necessary component of the toolbox of adulthood that allows us to move on.

Moving forward leads to a cycle of forgetfulness- forgetting the name of that girl who pushed you off the swings in preschool or forgetting the date of your high school graduation. We forget faces, names, dates, details, but they are easily replaced as our lives evolve. Emotions, however, are not replaced. Emotions are the roots of life. We remember the tear-inducing embarrassment when we were pushed of the swings, and we remember the exhilaration of grasping a high school diploma. Remembering and reliving emotions of the past are what remind us of our humanity. Emotions signal to us that while the world around us changes, amends, and evolves the person inside of us grows as well, to our own rhythm. Emotions are the great connector. Staying grounded by emotions of our past, particularly the good ones, connects our pasts to our futures, making the unknown ahead seem conquerable.

A few years ago, my grandpa found himself held hostage by bone cancer. He sat confined on a bed claustrophobic from the bustle of white gowns, medical equipment, a tube containing his reproducing cells, and his life expectancy of two more weeks. The chill of the hospital and that stale, sanitized smell swallowed hopelessness and spread it generously. Around lunch time, my aunt came through the door with a tray of pink frosted cupcakes. She motioned to my mom and me and we followed her into the room where my grandpa had already spent a week.

“Trust me,” she whispered. “This will make him smile.”

I saw my grandpa propped up by two pillows staring dejectedly at the vanilla pudding in front of him. We said our usual hellos, talked about the weather and something in the news. Then my aunt presented him with one of the twelve cupcakes sitting contently in their container.

“Remember? Your mom used to make these for you all the time,” my aunt said.

And just like that, the strawberry frosted cupcakes triggered something-something that a thousand get-well cards and a million flowers could not trigger. Suddenly he was no longer sitting in loneliness at the Morristown Hospital. He was a young boy helping his mother on their Virginia farm, or maybe he was helping to organize books at his father’s store. This connection to his childhood, and the mere excitement of a fluffy cupcake reminded him that there was more to him than this cancer and more to his life than that hospital.

A week later, he was released from the hospital, cancer defeated. My grandma said his incredible doctors were responsible for his recovery. And me? I say it was the strawberry-frosted cupcakes.