Not Just a Trifle

Challenge Your Perspective

Doesn’t that trifle look decadent and delicious!?! Trust me it was amazing!

It’s SO much more than just a trifle though. Its creation brought some pretty big life lessons.

It was made the day after a special occasion, either my birthday or Mother’s Day. I can’t remember which since they are only a week apart.

This had been the end result of…

My granddaughter’s EPIC FAIL.

The creation of our trifle was so much more than just simply the making of a dessert.

This was a journey and there had been many forks in the road. Countless times we had to pause, breathe, and make a choice that could either lead us into a dark, consuming pit of despair or to something profoundly beautiful.

You see, my granddaughter has FASD, PTSD, and ADHD. Everything in her life is a challenge, but we face every challenge head-on.

She loves to bake and she desperately longs to be independent, but she isn’t quite there yet. They say there’s a good chance that she will always need a Life Skills aid. That doesn’t keep us from trying to teach her those ever-important life skills though, because who knows maybe ‘they’ are wrong. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time!

She wanted to bake me a cake for my special day. She’d never been left unsupervised in the kitchen, but this time she wanted to do it on her own. It was going to be her gift to me, so she didn’t want me to ruin her big surprise by helping.

She didn’t want her aunt to help either. My daughter would just take over the whole endeavor the moment she saw J start to struggle. Then it wouldn’t be her gift to me anymore.

She promised that she wouldn’t leave a mess. She’d clean up after herself, just like I’d shown her countless times before. Even as the words so eloquently flowed from her lips I knew that I would likely be cleaning up the aftermath well beyond my next birthday.

Reluctantly, I told her to let me think about it while she looked for a recipe and made sure that we had all of the ingredients that she’d need. I was already incredibly busy and certainly didn’t have time to drive all the way to town and back if there was something missing.

Over the moon with excitement, she raced for the kitchen.

I hadn’t said yes yet, but that is what she’d heard.

Before long I heard cupboard doors squeaking open and slamming shut and dishes clattering.

When I heard the stand mixer begin to whir, I pushed my chair away from my desk, rolled my eyes to the heavens, and muttered, ‘Dear Lord!’

I swear, God answered me…

’No fledgling has ever learned to fly without first spreading their wings.’

I took a deep breath and prayed that He wouldn’t let her fall too hard, and I returned to what I’d been working on.

It seemed like an eternity that I’d sat with bated breath and one ear on the commotion in my kitchen. It took every fiber of my being to stay firmly planted in front of my computer, as I listened to what could only be the absolute destruction of the very heart of my home.

Really it was less than an hour later when she timidly peaked through my office door and said that there was something ‘wrong’ with the recipe. The ingredients list included sugar, but she had followed every step, and nowhere did it tell her to add the sugar! She’d read it three times.

‘What!?! That can’t be right!’ I told her to bring me the cookbook, but that would only ruin her ‘big surprise’! I couldn’t see what she had chosen to make until she was ready to give it to me!

We compromised and she agreed to read the steps back to me, to ensure she had completed each and every one.

I was pleased to see a children’s cookbook that I knew illustrated each step.

She began reciting Step 1, which explained to ‘use room temperature butter and to whip it until… blah, blah, blah…’

‘Wait a minute!’ I said, ‘When you were mixing the ingredients did you just blah, blah past whipping the butter?’

‘Well, yeah,’ she replied, blushing sheepishly.

‘READ the rest of step 1,’ I told her.

Her blush deepened as she tossed her hair over her shoulder and turned back to the kitchen. ‘I guess I’ll just put it in now!’

I followed explaining that she’d best not be surprised if her cake didn’t turn out exactly as she’d expected. She cast a sideways glance my way and growled.

‘Baking is a science, like chemistry. If you want a certain result, you have to follow the directions precisely,’ I said before retreating back to my office. She was already getting upset, there was no need for me to salt the wound.

As I’d expected, when the cake came out of the oven, it wasn’t the moist masterpiece she’d been hoping for.

The tears were welling up in her eyes when she came and asked for help to get them out of the pans.

‘We might as well just put it in the pig bucket!’ she exclaimed.

With as much patience as I could muster, I showed her how to turn the cake pans upside down onto the cooling racks without them crumbling to pieces. We placed a heavy towel over them to allow them to sweat a little so they’d slide out a little easier.

I bit my tongue and fought my own tears when I observed the flour and cake batter splattered all the way up walls and cupboards and onto my kitchen ceiling. It seemed every dish I owned had been used in this creation and now littered my cupboards and stove.

It looked like a bomb had gone off, but I said nothing of it.

I softly murmured that she needn’t worry. Her cake would surely taste divine for all of the love that she had poured into it.

As we sat down to our dessert that evening, I just knew that this was going to be one of those defining moments not just for our relationship, but for her entire life.

I watched intently as she took her first bite and immediately clasped her hand tightly across her mouth, fighting the urge to spit the cake back onto her plate.

Her eyes, wide with horror, watched me back, as I cautiously tasted her gift of love. I closed my eyes and rolled the dry, gritty mass across my tongue, trying desperately to savor the rich, chocolaty flavor, while ignoring the offensive texture of the sand.

‘It tastes divine!’ I said.

As I scrubbed the batter from counters and walls that night, I racked my brain for ways to transform her cake into something that we could actually eat without choking.

I knew full well that she would be crushed if she were to find her gift in the pig bucket the next morning.

When she woke I asked her if she’d ever had a trifle. The puzzled look on her face answered my question.

I told her that her cake was the perfect base. She looked at me, filled with doubt and I told her to just trust the process.

Her disappointment was tangible as we ran the cake through the food processor. Once we started layering the cake, caramel sauce, pudding, and whipped cream I detected the tiniest spark of hope.

I can’t even count the number of times she asked for 'just a tiny taste’, as we waited for the trifle to set.

I would gently remind her that baking is a science and that sometimes we need to be patient and allow the chemistry to work its magic.

By the end of the day her dry, gritty, crumbling mass had been transformed into something richly decadent. It was a much more accurate representation of her love for me.

The only problem was that after her first taste, she didn’t want to share anymore!