With anxiety racing from head to toe, I clasped my hands, released them, and began the simple process again and again.

I wasn’t afraid of being hurt. Why should I be? I knew each and every one of the eleven middle-aged women that surrounded me in this elementary school gym where, without admitting guilt, one or two may have alleged me and my friends slipped in during breaks to play basketball. We never marred the hardwood floor; always took off our shoes and boots. The custodian granted us permission when he looked the other way.

Today's conversation murmur didn’t exactly exclude me, but the undercurrent said I, as a teenage boy, wasn’t specifically invited to add my everyday experience to adult matters. This exclusion allowed me an opportunity to ponder why I fretted to be in this delicate position.

Hours before, as on any summer day, I completed my afternoon newspaper route and entered the kitchen to find my mother in, let’s say, a “state.”

Three sponge cakes lay in collapsed states on the kitchen table.

“This humidity ruins everything,” said Mother. There might have been words I missed, but this quote captures the gist.

I had no response. My mother was a decorated state baking champion. I, while a 4-H member, had taken food preparation because, as the elder of four boys, my mother had often told me no son of hers would enter the world without knowing how to cook, clean, and wash clothes.

I’d accepted that with the assumption the “world” meant after high school graduation.

Be that as it may, my mother glared at me. I said, “What?”

“You make a sponge cake,” she said.

Her words were polite, yet I could not refuse. I’d progressed, according to the county 4-H judges, past snacks and lunches to full meals. That included desserts. Sponge cake defined as a dessert.

I stashed my paperbag in the corner and began breaking eggs. My stirs were hesitant, but Mother, after peeks over my shoulder, left me alone in the kitchen. Her sponge cake recipe proved easy to read. I had no pressure. If I failed, well, I had joined the club of being defeated by the invisible humidity.

Sweat beads formed on my forehead. The cake in the oven baked. I knew from prior experience that success was never guaranteed. What rises in the oven can collapse when presented to kitchen display.

With oven mitts on both hands, I breathed without gasps as my sponge cake stood tall.

My mother hugged me.

Did I gloat? No. She’d been my teacher. And, the heavens above which included my grandmother had spared me.

I did have to promise my mother that I’d enter my cake in the township contest that evening at the elementary school. And, thus, that’s why I’m sitting here with other community women, most who live in houses I deliver a newspaper to.

While I wait for the judge’s announcement, I’m happy my success encouraged my mother to try again after her failures. She baked a fourth sponge cake and this one did not collapse.

She entered it against mine. If she won, I didn’t care. No one but her would know of the prior failures. When I glanced at the faces of the other women, I guessed they had baked more cakes than the one they entered. Should I ask? Mother said that would be rude.

When the judges paraded in with their papers hidden, I perceived myself to be calmer than the women around me.

When neither my mother nor I won first or second place, Mother’s facial features hardened. She’d won this competition four times before as a springboard to state glory. Not to repeat lessened her reputation, not her skill. She’d said before our arrival that the top three cakes go on to the next competition and being first, second, or third made no difference. Thus, for no outward reason my muscles tensed.

I sat there. One position open and, while ten cakes competed, one was mine and one was my mother’s. It created a no win situation.

The announcing judge shuffled papers. The previous silenced murmur began to re-emerge.

The judge said,” We seem to have a result never before experienced.”

Wow, I thought, Mother again on her way to state accolades.

“Third, and one of our entrants into the county contest, goes to …”

If a hush could ever be smashed to nothing, it was this day.

I hugged my mother when the judge announced to a splattering of applause I’d come in third.

She whispered to me, “Stand up and take your certificate. You’ve made me proud.”