WestSide Press

Aunt Mary was sanctified. Her sanctification was lived at church and at home, where she was prone to speak in tongues “as the spirit gave utterance”—as she often testified at my grandparents’ (George and Florence Hagler) True Vine Church of God In Christ on Chicago’s West Side, where our family settled during the Great Migration.

Aunt Mary was a major force at church, often spearheading testimony service, leading us in worship and song with fiery spiritual intoxication, two-stepping across the carpeted floor when her joy overflowed.

As Sweet As Her German Chocolate Cake & Syrupy Kool-Aid; Remembering My Dear Aunt Mary Who Taught Us How To Pray, The Golden Rule and Blessed Us Before School Aunt Mary was sweet. But aunt Mary didn’t play. And her love for us and for the Lord never waned.

I looked for the iconic green mermaid like I once used to look for the golden arches as a sure slice or cup of Americana. I rode my Harley there. Lingered on summer evenings longer after the orange-red sun dipped below the horizon.

'She's Lost That Loving Feeling'; Weaning Myself Off Starbucks I pop a K-cup into my Keurig, winter sunlight spilling through my blinds, the scent of coffee wafting through my home amid the pecking on my computer, and memories of the green maiden I once loved.

But nothing—nothing—compares to German chocolate cake made the way my Aunt Mary, my mother’s eldest sister, made it when I was a kid. Not from a box but from scratch—her heart and hands baking our family’s cakes for years and filling our lives with goodness.

No knock against Betty Crocker. But some ingredients can’t be boxed.

What's In A Cake: Caramel, Coconut, Time and TLC I came to accept that I might never encounter a peach cobbler as perfect as Grandmother’s or a German chocolate cake as glorious as Aunt Mary’s. But perhaps I did not account for the virtues of time.