Be safe cake lady

Twelve days ago I went to pick up my sons' birthday cake from the bakery section of the supermarket near our vacation home on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. While we get to be known by a few locals over the course of those two weeks, we didn't have a sense of interacting with the same folks year in and year out. Except for the folks my husband buys bait from. They remember us.

I asked for the cake from the woman behind the pastry case. She disappeared and a few minutes later returned with the large sheet cake with two photographs scanned onto the white frosting. She had written their names and the birthday message in red, white and blue icing.

"I made their cake last year" she said to me. Then she looked down and thought out loud "I've done their cakes for the last few years".

It was true. We love how they put our boys' faces on the cakes.

And now, the woman who makes our boys' birthday cakes, the couple who make the best pizza, the folks that sell my husband his fishing bait, and thousands of others, are facing a category 4 hurricane.

Be safe cake lady. And Cosmos Pizza. And Corolla Bait and Tackle. And everyone else.

Be safe.