I blame the food porn.  If it hadn’t been for the saliva-inducing photo of those profiteroles stuffed with peaches and  whipped cream and drizzled in caramelized sugar, she’d have just made a pan of brownies.  I’d have made it through a lot more emails and caught up with the bills, and the kitchen wouldn’t have been ground zero for the explosion.  

Saoirse and Bob came home from their Thursday Chitty Chitty Bang Bang rehearsal shell-shocked and despondent.  So many dance steps, so many earnest community members trying to master them, so many scheduling conflicts, so little coordination, so little time.  The show is only a few weeks out, and the cast sentiment Thursday night was that they were in way over their heads.  

I listen to Bob and Saoirse’s drama dramas with the same interest that Ula and I watch old episodes of Sabrina the Teenage Witch while they’re at rehearsals.  Each time they come home, I enjoy a whole new episode of Chit Happens*: The Story Behind the Musical.  I follow the plot and character developments with interest: who showed up, who didn’t, who got frustrated, who had a breakthrough.  And just as I do with Sabrina, I don’t get wrapped up in it.  The drama behind the play — the struggles, doubts and last minute wins— are all part of the show.  The characters moving across the stage for the actual play, whether they’re tripping or skipping, are all just part of the season finale.  So I stay tuned, but I don’t worry about Saoirse’s dance steps, or Bob’s lines and songs.  It’s going to be great no matter what.

Instead, my attention is absorbed with the farm: trying to remember all the details Kate kept track of before her maternity leave, trying to meet the final requirements for our beer and wine license, trying to position the farm to hold onto Shilo full-time and make financial room to bring more people into the fold.  There was a time when my kids had my full attention.  These days, they do not.  I feel as though I’ve graduated from that phase of my life.  The kids need more independence and autonomy, and I’m trying to focus on my own personal callings.  For my enduring happiness, to ensure I don’t grow into a bitter guilt-inflicting wretch, I need to release my investment in everyone else’s challenges and problems and engage more deeply with my own.  

…Which is why I sense a trap when Saoirse shows me that food porn.  She wants to prepare special profiteroles like the ones in the picture for the all-day rehearsal on Saturday. 

“Everyone’s so down, Mom,” she explains.  “I want to do something to cheer people up.  I want to make people smile.”

I point out that peaches are no longer in season.

“I’m going to use wild apples.”

I glimpse the immediate future: a trashed kitchen, a culinary disaster, a frustrated, disheartened teenager.

“You don’t have enough time.  You’ll stay up too late.”

She gives me a dose of my own medicine and presents a carefully organized schedule of when she’ll prepare each stage of the recipe, ending with a dose of whipped cream on each.  

“You can’t use whipped cream.  You’ll have to be on stage all day and won’t be able to stop rehearsal to fill the shells.  You’ll need to use pastry cream.  Pastry cream will stay stable through the morning as long as you keep it chilled.  Whipped cream will deflate.” 

“I’ll do the pastry cream.  But I think there should be whipped cream, too.”

“It won’t work.”

“It will.”

“Just because the picture has it doesn’t mean you have to do it that way,” I argue.  

“I got this.”

“You could just put the whipped cream on top right before you serve them, and skip the caramelized sugar.”

“It has to have the caramelized sugar.”

And herein lies my dilemma.  I’m trying to learn to care less.  But my kid is learning to care more.  I worry about that food porn she’s getting her hands on.  It’s sending her all kinds of messages about unrealistic ideals.  I want to confront her with the wisdom I’ve gained in my 45 years:  It’s not your job to fix things.  You CAN’T fix things for other people.  

Yet around the house, I’m teaching her something different:  Fix things!  Do your share!  Don’t be selfish!  Think of others!

This is the conundrum I face raising daughters.  Unselfish acts make us happy.  They help us step away from our own problems, refresh our outlooks and give us a confidence boost.  But “selfish” acts — independent creative challenges coupled with time and space boundaries are equally important in the balance.  I want to teach one lesson and be consistent.  But what I need to teach my daughters is to accept the tension between the two and find a workable solution.

“Why don’t you just make brownies?”  Nope.  She wasn’t having it.  The food porn taunted her to strive for greater things.  “But you don’t even have a recipe.  You’re just looking at a picture.”

And there was the next conundrum.  When does a mere photograph underscore the untenable, setting us up for failure, and when does it present the next great challenge that will fuel our joy and learning?  How will she further her skills if she doesn’t push her limits?

Two conundrums for one piece of food porn is more than I can work through.  I shrug my shoulders.  “Do what you want,” I say, “Just don’t ask me to do a thing.”  And I walk out the door for a hike.  

By Friday’s end a pile of golden profiteroles is heaped on the kitchen counter.  The apples are peeled, sliced, sautéed in butter and cinnamon and put away.  A lump-free pastry cream is setting up perfectly in the fridge.  The kitchen is clean.  Saoirse informs me of her plan to wake at 7am Saturday to finish the project in time for the 10am rehearsal.  I’m impressed.  Maybe her command of the tipping point between unrealistic and doable, between selfish and unselfish, is better than my own.  Maybe I’m teaching these concepts better than I thought???  “Good!  No whipped cream!” I observe.  “How will you do the caramel?”

“I haven’t worked that out yet.”  I bite my lip and head up to bed. 

And that’s when the next episode of Chit Happens unfolds.  Saoirse keeps looking at the food porn.  And the food porn torments her about the whipped cream.  And it’s not just simply whipped and spooned.  It’s been piped in a beautiful swirl.  She has to make the profiteroles look like the food porn.  At 9:30 on this rainy Friday night, with her mother safely asleep, Saoirse creeps downstairs to where her father is reading beside the wood stove.  I’ll never know what cajoling words she uses, but she convinces him to go out in the frigid wet darkness, drive to the cafe to retrieve our commercial whipped cream can, nozzle and cartridges; then drive another half hour to Cobleskill to buy heavy cream.  There is some agreement between them that this information be withheld from the controlling beast of a mother who unwittingly sleeps upstairs.

I rise early to work on the farm books.  A little while later I hear Saoirse come down the stairs and start working in the kitchen.  She periodically pops her head into my office to offer chirpy progress reports.  “The profiteroles are all cut!”  Then, “the pastry cream is piped!”  And, “The apples are in!”  I clack happily at my keyboard, proud of my kid, delighted to have no involvement whatsoever in this culinary endeavor, pleased to be working on my own stuff.  She’s caring more, but with success.  I’m caring less, and loving it. 

“It’s about time to leave,” Bob calls out to her.  “Better wrap it up.”

“Okay!” She sings out cheerfully.

Then she sneaks out the whipped cream.  Suddenly, she isn’t reporting to me.  “Dad?!”  Her voice warbles a little.  He doesn’t answer right away.  I hear a funny hissing sound.  “Dad?!”  She’s louder this time.  She runs through the house until she finds him.  “Dad!  The gas is leaking from the canister!  We need to get more cartridges from the cafe!  And I can’t figure out how to make it stop leaking!”

I hear it all from my desk.  I told her not to do the whipped cream.  Bob’s footsteps pound through the house to the kitchen.  He takes the canister from her hands and begins wrestling with it. 

That’s when I hear the explosion.  Heavy cream spurts around the kitchen.  Invectives flood the entire house.  Saoirse’s wails of despair ring out over all of it.  

I can’t focus on the bookkeeping.  But I’m not going near that mess.  I close my program and start going through emails.  

Saoirse’s exhausted.  And when she’s exhausted, she completely loses her composure.  The tears don’t stop.  She wanted to do something special for the cast.  She wanted to try something new.  She didn’t want to pull her mother from her daily practice of controlled selfishness.  

I stare blankly at my computer screen.  Where is that tipping point?  Where do I cross the line from putting them first to putting myself first?  When does the unachievable become achievable?

I spin my chair away from my desk as she comes running into my office.  Maternal instinct makes all the next decisions.  I meet her with open arms.  “You don’t need the whipped cream,” I start again.

“No!  This has to be done right!  We have to get more whipped cream and do it again!”  She clings to me, her tears soaking my shoulder. 

There is only one thing that can fix this.  It’s a magic boundary.  If she can’t shrug her shoulders and say “good enough,” then I must do it for her.  

“Absolutely not.  It cannot be done.  You don’t have time, and whipped cream would just ruin these.”  Her shoulders relax for a moment, then tense again.  “But I haven’t found a recipe for the caramel topping yet!”

We have ten minutes until they have to leave.  The entire family jumps in.  Saoirse runs to get cleaned up, Bob and Ula pull the tops off the profiteroles and line them up on the counter.  I put the sugar on the cooktop to caramelize.  I finish browning it and am just drizzling it across the tops of the pastry as she comes down the stairs.  I move to the sink while she and Bob work with lightening speed to put them all back together again.

They’re stunning.

And delicious.

Selfish or unselfish?  Unrealistic or doable?  Neither conundrum is an issue any longer.  Working as a family, we abandoned the either/or tipping points and created something greater than we thought possible.  The profiteroles were way prettier than the food porn.  Saoirse hits a new level in her cooking.  Bob and I are elated by her success.  Ula licks her fingers.  

I don’t know what the final episode of Chit Happens will be like, but this episode had some fascinating plot twists and great character development.  I’m truly looking forward to the season finale. 

The Theater Project of Schoharie County will present Chitty Chitty Bang Bang  at the Cobleskill Richmondville High School this coming weekend:  Friday and Saturday, Nov. 8 & 9 @7pm; Sunday, Nov 10 @2pm. Tickets are $10, $7 for seniors and students. 

 

Ps:  From Saoirse’s tasting notes: These are better without the whipped cream.

*I do wish I came up with that expression on my own, but credit is due to Dennis Shaw, one of the show’s producers.  Thanks for the great words, Dennis!