Unexpected Emotions

As I say almost every blog now, I am a baker. I can do cakes, but it's not my strong suit. I have done a few wedding cakes, but to me they are not worth the mental stress (I have had a few bad experiences). I have started saying to people who ask that I will only do wedding cakes for blood relatives, the last one being my sister. But that one wasn't so bad, because my dad and I made it together (I made the cake and icing and did the basket weave, and my dad did the rest).

A few months ago I was chatting online with a friend (I'm not using any names, just in case), and she asked me if I did wedding cakes. My guard instantly went up, but instead of saying "no" I asked "why?" She told me that she had a friend who was a cancer survivor (let's call her Jane to alleviate confusion) and was getting married in the fall. Jane was on a tight budget and lived close to me, and my friend thought it would be a nice gesture to help out with the wedding cake. I gave her my blood relative line, but I told her I would think about it. Meanwhile, I looked Jane up on Facebook. I could only see her photo because of privacy settings, but it was a picture of her and her fiance, and they looked so cute together. I think it was that picture that convinced me to help. I emailed my friend back and told her I would do the cake, but I also stipulated that the only good thing about the cake was that it would be cheap. I don't have as much confidence in my cake making as I do in my bread baking, so I really undersold myself in the email. My friend said that she didn't want the wedding cake to be torture for me, so she didn't let Jane know, and I didn't try to convince her otherwise. I think that same week I started watching Cake Boss, and the show hit a little close to home for me with the bad parts about making cakes, so it was a relief to me that I wasn't going to make the cake.

This wedding cake was still in the back of my mind though, and last week I decided that I would do it, confidence be damned. I just hoped that I wasn't too late, since it was a little over 2 months until the wedding. I let my friend know, and she told me to go ahead and email Jane through Facebook. I went through my friend's Facebook friend list, but I didn't find her. I searched for her on Facebook, but I couldn't find her that way either. I knew her fiance's last name, so I searched for that in the region he lives in, but he also disappeared from Facebook. I Googled Jane and her fiance, but I couldn't find anything recent, and I was panicking because I thought something bad had happened to her. I spent a good part of the afternoon searching for her on the internet, but no matter what combination of words I used, I found nothing. I was really worried at this point, and I emailed my friend to tell her that Jane was no longer on Facebook. She emailed back later that night to tell me that she was there in her friend list, and she sent me the link to her page. I clicked on the link and got my home page, and I then figured out that she had changed her privacy settings to friends only, which never occurred to me while I was searching for her, afraid of what I might find out.

I did eventually get in touch with Jane to let her know that I would be willing to do her wedding cake. She sent me a reply and was very sweet about it, and she told me that they had a cake as a package deal with the reception hall. I was again relieved that I didn't have to make the cake, but I was also disappointed more than I was relieved, possibly because I felt a connection with her after my alarming few hours of fruitless searching.

I have never met Jane, and now I probably never will, but for an afternoon it felt like a friend was slipping away from me. I really don't know why I felt that way, is it strange or normal? Has anyone else felt like this before? I don't mean with a celebrity either, just a regular person. I suppose this kind of chance encounter doesn't come up very often.