Chocolate Cake and Hospitality

This afternoon I came home and made my Grandmama's chocolate cake.
Anyone who knows me well knows the cake I am talking about.
This afternoon as I baked and made the fudge icing and turned the plate round and round as I pulled the fudge up the sides of the cake my mind was stuck on my grandmother. I remember seeing this cake in my grandmother's kitchen on her green dinette table almost every time we visited her. I remember once she made a German Chocolate cake and I was disappointed because I did not like coconut back then. (I wised up eventually and found that her German Chocolate was as good as her Chocolate but I was young and stupid.) The next time we visited she had both cakes. She was such a serving woman. Not timid and weak but hospitable as she could be. She could never understand what was so special about her cake but she humored us all by making it over and over. I wonder how many times she has made it. We went to visit on Friday nights when I was a child. We lived relatively close and could make the trip in a half hour. If we did not make it on Friday I guess we would be there on Sunday for church and dinner. She was quite a cook as so many women from her generation but she was the best.
My dad says that there was always someone staying over at their house. The house was always full. The kids would just double up sleeping and make room for someone else.

Tonight is JG's last night with us after four months of spending weeknights here and weekends with his family while he started his new job locally. Monday the family will move into their new home in a new location. I am both excited for their family and sad to see him go. Although it was hard on JG and his family at least JG was not lonely. He may have preferred that sometimes and meals were always late late for a city guy.

Grandmama's chocolate cake is in honor of JG tonight.
I will miss having him here.
A full house is so much more fun than a lonely house.