Shaken Baking

I thought I had properly done the mental autopsy on my family's relationship with Donnie Snook. I had my white night going over every interaction, feeling and trying to find something I had missed. I don't know what I was hoping I would remember. Catching a glimpse of a NAMBLA tattoo peeking from under a sleeve? Anything in hindsight that seemed inappropriate or fishy I guess. 

The thing is I can remember when my son first started school I WAS suspicious of Donnie. What were his motives? Is he really that altruistic? Why is he here from Newfoundland? What did he leave? Why does he take the kids swimming and everywhere else? Why the fuck does this man give a shit about these kids when no one else, sometimes including their parents, do? Like everyone else, I ended up being put at ease. It all just seemed, ok.

I admit  I am a suspicious person. I tend to feel the more bible thumpy and churchy a guy is then the more likely he likes kids bums. That is my inner dialogue and I admit it is a bit extreme. However, this suspicion has kept me talking to my kids about owning their bodies for as long as I can remember. I talk about the fact that adults are not always right and that if an adult tells you not to tell, tell immediately. They know to say no very very loudly. They can deliver wicked kicks to the shin and nads and run. They know to be wary not only of strangers but of the people who are supposed to  care for them. 

I did not realize just how much my tenuous grip on sanity depended on all these conversations being purely hypothetical. They were never supposed to be anything but just  in case scenarios. They were never ever supposed to be tested. Every year I could count down one year closer to my babies not being considered prey by some perv. 

Then I fucking find out they had been spending hours a day a few days a week for fucking years with the Big Bad Fucking Wolf himself. What the fuck. 

So I did all the things I guess you do. I went a bit crazy. I questioned the kids. I called friends and ranted and raved. I read the news and watched the news. I wrote and I had a cry and I thought  it was all back to ok for us.

Then I realized I had made about eight batches of brownies in three days. From scratch, using recipes from the UK that required conversion, sugar that had to be processed into superfine sugar and chocolate and nuts to be chopped up and weighed. I adapted recipes until they were mere shadows of their former selves, using successful tricks from one in another and changing ingredients like a whore changes panties. I created my own original recipes and executed them successfully for the first time in my life. In a few days I applied every skill I had ever acquired and poured my heart into my stand mixer.

I found the comfort in comfort food is found not only in the eating of it. I was so helpless to do anything real for my babies. There was no actual boo boo to kiss, only  the spectre of evil  in our midst, how the fuck do you kiss that better?

So I fed them. I now know what it means to use love as an ingredient. I was making gooey morsels of my love and protection and every ounce of mothering I could do so they could eat it and be safe. 

To everyone feeling as I do with each new article, here, have a brownie.