The first time I knew my parents loved each other was when my father Hoovered ants off my mother’s precious Christmas cake. Granted, it’s no ordinary cake. It’s a fruitcake my British mother makes two months before the holidays, injecting it weekly with dark rum to keep it moist.

As an American child more interested in Ho-Hos, it seemed unfathomable to me that my parents liked fruitcake, with its shriveled little raisins, currants, and sultanas. Worse yet were the red and green candied cherries my mother added “for Christmas color” which glowed as bright as traffic lights on a winter’s eve.

But the cake was one of the few things my parents enjoyed together. Otherwise, they seemed like strangers to each other. As far as I knew, my parents never kissed or cuddled. They never requested “alone time” like the cute and affectionate TV parents on Family Ties. My father immersed himself in his science books while my mother raced around doing housework, never sitting down to rest. But every year during the holidays, we would come together to play Trivial Pursuit and eat our way through my mother’s array of English desserts over the course of a few days. The strict manners I was raised on—in the unlikely event we’d meet the Queen—were put aside and we’d balance dessert plates on our laps in the living room. I’d scarf down English trifle while my parents slowly enjoyed slice after slice of Christmas cake.

I’d know it was cake-baking day when, in mid-October, I’d be decorating pumpkins for Halloween and my mother would come downstairs wearing a Santa-themed sweater. She would tie her Christmas-tree apron behind her back, smooth out her grandmother’s handwritten recipe, and pour herself a glass of sherry. I can still recall her humming pa-rum-pum-pum-pum over the whir of the mixer.

Once the cake had cooled, my mother would soak it with rum for the first of many times. I’d hold my nose and waft away the rum’s plumes of pungent molasses. My mother would subsequently shoo me right out of her kitchen.

I’d only become excited about the cake in December when she’d cloak it in marzipan. I’d roll the leftover marzipan into balls, sucking out the almond flavor from each one. Just before Christmas, she’d whisk up the cake’s final layer: a powdered-sugar mixture, shaped into icy snowdrifts as stiff as her British upper lip.

We used to think of the cake as indestructible—a twelve-by-twelve brick that the booze ensured would never spoil. And so, it sat out on our kitchen sideboard all season. But the year I turned eleven, when I was still an odd mix of lanky limbs and chubby cheeks, I was sneaking a nibble of the cake’s icing when I saw a trail of black ants advancing single-file across its snow-like surface.

I jumped backwards and yelled for my mother who, upon seeing the marching devils, clutched the sides of her face like the portrait of The Scream.

“Jooooohn! Ants are invading the Christmas cake!” my mother shouted to my father, her large breasts heaving against her buttoned-up shirt.

Instead of his usual disinterest, he sprung off his recliner. He understood the cake’s importance. It was not just a month’s worth of dessert from December 25th onward, but one of the few ways my mother kept her British traditions alive in our Silicon Valley home.

My father’s footsteps approached, then veered away. My mother’s Yorkshire accent deepened. “Flippin’ ‘eck! Where the bloody ‘ell are you going?”

Seconds later, my father returned with the vacuum. He turned it on high and wielded the snaky vacuum attachment as if it were a weapon.

“Quick, John. Get every blasted one of ‘em!” she said.

I collapsed into a heap of giggles.

When the ants were finally wind-lashed to death in the Hoover, the rescue turned into a rare moment of affection. My parents stared at the cake and slid their arms around each other. The gap between them closed. I leaned against the counter, watching. I hadn’t realized how much I’d needed to see them as a loving couple. I wrapped my arms around myself, breathing in the lingering smell of the vacuum’s burnt motor.

A few years went by until I saw their intimacy again. It involved yet another infestation. That time, ants had snuck under the cake and were ravaging one of its spongy quadrants. Like before, my fathe grabbed the vacuum, but another level of heroism was needed. The roar of the vacuum was soon replaced by cutlery clanking as he rummaged for a knife.

“We can save it!” my father yelled.

His balding head bent over the cake as he cut away the ant-infested corner with the seriousness of a surgeon. Then, my parents began working side-by-side, elbows rubbing as my mother whipped up a new frosting.

“Imagine how drunk the ants must be off the rum!” he said, patting her soft bottom.

“Oh, blast,” she giggled. “That means they’ll want more!”

They then conspired to serve that very same cake at their holiday party.

And serve it they did. One of their expat friends ate it with as much satisfaction as the years before. My whole body tingled wondering whether a rogue ant would make a surprise appearance. No ants caught my attention, but the bright-blue eyes of my mother did. She was winking at my father every time another guest helped themself to the cake. My father grinned back at her in their own subtle romance language.

That year my father surprised my mother with a late Christmas gift. She unwrapped the largest Tupperware box I’d ever seen. “Large enough to protect your cake!” he announced, clapping his hands together. My mother went quiet at first. I swear I saw a tear escape before she planted a slow kiss on his salt and pepper stubble.

Years later, the cake would make an appearance in my own love union. While wedding planning, my mother begged me to consider serving England’s traditional wedding dessert.

“What’s dessert is that?” I asked.

“It’s really the same as my Christmas cake,” my mother said.

“You mean...fruitcake?” I recoiled as if I’d seem more ants.

“Oh but think of the beautiful white frosting! We’d stick a bride and groom figurine on
top instead of the snowman.”

I wasn’t having it. Not at first, anyway. I wanted nothing more than a sweet buttery American three-layer white chocolate cake. Then, I recalled how much my mother’s cake embodied a slice of my parents’ love. And so, the Christmas-turned-wedding cake became one of two cakes we served the wedding guests. I barely remember the other one.

My mother’s Christmas-tree apron is now frayed, and her rough hands reveal a lifetime of housework. Yet, her baking and rum-nursing ritual continues. To this day, my mother’s cake still brings out the rare lovey-dovey side of my parents when, through laughs and the occasional snort, they entertain their six grandkids with Christmas-time stories.

The ones about the ants will always take the cake.

-KT Ryan

KT Ryan writes about motherhood, divorce, and facial palsy when she’s not busy trying to up her pickleball game. Her essays have been featured in Newsweek, The Sun, and several journals. She’s been a finalist for the Diana Woods Memorial Award and Wild Atlantic Writing Award. She is a founding member of the Pacific Coast Writers Collective. Before writing creative nonfiction, KT wrote research reports and testimony for the U.S. Congress.