Lamb Cake by Deanne Ames
Deanne Ames
After years of providing psychotherapy to survivors of complex trauma, Deanne Ames, now retired, uses a pseudonym to write about her own abuse in childhood as well as her path to healing. She plans to publish her memoir, Devil Wind: Coming of Age in a Secret Storm, soon.
Lamb Cake
For many years on my birthday, my Grandma Lil* baked me a cake in the shape of a lamb. Miss Lamby Cake consisted of white cake and white buttercream frosting, with shredded sweet coconut for her “fur” and jellybeans for her brown eyes and pink nose.
A lamb for my little lamb, she’d say, carrying the cake on a platter adorned with green coconut “grass” to the solid wooden table in my grandparents’ dining room. She and Grandpa Bert would sing to me, then I’d make a wish and blow out the pink candles.
I never told my grandparents what I’d wished for, in my seven-, eight-, and nine-year-old way: that I could stay in their house forever, that they’d keep me safe from my mother’s new husband, but only if it meant I’d still have my mother’s love.
Despite what my mother’s husband did to me whenever he could, despite the agony of holding the secrets he insisted I keep (It would hurt your mommy, and you don’t want to do that. And she’d be mad at you, too.) I didn’t want to leave my mother; I wanted him to go away instead. I adored my mother, at least until I realized, at fourteen, that even my finally telling her about her husband’s hands-on abuse in the past and ongoing lewd innuendos wouldn’t impel her to throw him out.
Fortunately, in my younger years, my grandparents’ home was a short bike ride away from my own. It was my refuge, my escape, the place I could truly be a child. The lamb-shaped cake pan came out from its resting place in the cupboard only once a year; but the feeling of being special to my grandparents, of being safe and loved, endured throughout the intervening months.
My grandparents saw me as the young child I really was—innocent as a lamb, in need of loving guidance, protection and care—not the child I felt like most of the time: sad, fearful and ashamed. In my childlike way of thinking, I was to blame for the ongoing abuse: having chosen to keep secrets to protect my mother’s feelings and protect myself from her anger, I must have decided the abuse was, in some convoluted way, my own fault. If only (as my thinking went) I were willing to risk her feeling sad or being angry at me, maybe things might change.
The seeds of my later struggle with codependency were planted in those early years: I must protect others even at my own expense; otherwise, I’ll be alone (I feared, if only subconsciously), with only myself to blame. Putting the responsibility squarely where it belonged—on my mother’s husband for being a pedophile and on my mother for not protecting me—has taken years of healing to achieve. Finding a balance between being kind and compassionate towards my loved ones without taking responsibility for their feelings has proven to be a challenge, as well.
When I was at my grandparents’ house, even without realizing it, I saw myself through their eyes. As I played in their spacious backyard or followed Grandpa Bert around as he went about his chores outside or sat with Grandma Lil while she read me a story or told me about her own life as a child, I felt worthy of protection, a lamb in a safe pasture, not a lamb being led by an evil butcher to the perpetual slaughter of her self-esteem.
After healing substantially from the impact of the abuse in my childhood, through intensive therapy, 12-Step programs and cultivating relationships with people I can trust, I paid the healing forward as a psychotherapist, helping others recover from complex PTSD.
Sometimes I wonder what became of the lamb-shaped cake pan, or why my grandmother stopped baking me that special treat. I suspect I became a teenager who considered it “silly,” too childish for the young woman I wanted to be; but oh, how I’d love a lamb cake for my next birthday—my seventy-first.
There’s still time to find a lamb-shaped cake pan and to make myself this special gift for my birthday, still two months away. Before I blow out the candles and feel grateful for my grandparents and for the life I now have, I’ll imagine my grandmother saying the words she always said (a lamb for my little lamb), and I’ll smile.
* Names of both of my grandparents have been changed in the interest of privacy.