Fondants and trauma

Sorry for the recent silence. I've been busy, but that isn't really why I haven't been blogging. The main reason is because a dear friend of mine has been diagnosed with not one but two horrific illnesses, both degenerative and both terminal. Honeslty, I thought that after watching my sister's body being invaded by a relentless cancer, and experiencing the desperate impotence of watching her fade away before my eyes, powerless to do anything to stop it despite my many hours, long into the night, spent feverishly looking up medical trials and alternative remedies, I didn't think I could be shocked by serious physical illness again. I didn't think I could even experience the trauma again, that we all go through when someone we care about is diagnosed. I thought I was numb to it. Turns out, surprise surprise, I'm not. And not in that maudlin, memory-reviving way, though goodness knows there is quite a bit of that in my everyday life. It is only very recently, well into the second year since I lost my sister, that I began to understand properly, that I wasn't going to get past the grief and the loss, that instead I was going to need to reconcile myself to it as a burden I would carry with me for the rest of my life. I would in time learn to find a place for it. I would go through beautiful periods of memory, I would collect pictures of my past that would remind me of my sister, I would revive these with others in my family. But the grief wasn't ever going to go away. It was a part of me. That is a tough realisation. But that is not what sparked the introspection brought on by my friend's terrible challenges. Even with my altered perspective, turns out my main emotional responses haven't been affected, and I was shocked by my friend's diagnosis - shocked, concerned, upset, and deeply committed to working out sensible ways to be helpful. If there is one positive thing I did learn from my sister's illness, it was that really - that there are ways to be helpful that will actually add value, even in the grimmest of times in someone's life, and there are attempts at help that can be, well, unhelpful at best, or at worst pretty insensitive. So I ponder and decide that since there is nothing I can do about my friend's condition, I will help by reminding her of friendship, and offering her a place to come where she can talk about other things than what is happening to her body. I dug up my garden and built an entirely new one shortly after I lost my sister, and it has become a beautiful place of refuge. I invited my friend to come and sit in it, and she accepted with alacrity, even gratefully. I wandered into the kitchen and had a think about how baking could be a  part of this refuge. I needed to make something very special, and comforting at the same time. I've been watching the Masterchef semis with some envy as contestant after contestant has turned out the perfect fondant. I have never made one before. Didn't rate my baking skills highly enough. But this felt like an occasion worth pushing the boat out for. So. I pulled out the ingredients and proceeded with a familiar sense of release that I always get when I pick up a spatula and a mixing bowl, to prepare the ingredients for a chocolate peanut butter fondant. Tricky this. The consistency of the filling has to be just right if is going to be gooey, and the timing of the bake has to be spot on if the outside is to be a bit crusty but not too much, and the inside is to retain its softness. And, I almost, not quite but nearly, pull it off. These fondants look beautiful. They glisten darkly with chocolate. I cut down the middle of one, and, well, it's not gooey. Nope. I haven't delivered. But it's nearly there. The middle, the peanut butter bit, salty and caramelly, is very, very soft, while it's shell is a degree less so. I serve up creme fraiche and vanilla ice cream as options on the side, and bring one out to her. She bites into it, sat on my bench, staring at pink and purple and blue of my lush garden. She smiles. This is amazing, she says. I smile back. And thank the stars, not for the first time, for my baking passion. It beats a box of chocolates or a bag of grapes any day.