Disaster Pops
And how I've failed a lot this weekend but I'm still glad that I tried
There are certain things that I absolutely fail at.
Baking is one of those things.
That’s not quite true. I can handle breads and muffins and cakes, but when it comes to something like a cake pop? Or anything that might require decorating?
It’s pretty much over.
How over?
This over.
Those cake ball things are supposed to be on the top of the stick, not the bottom of the stick. They are supposed to be uniform and coated nicely. They are supposed to be pretty and fun.
Cake pops are meant to be . . . cake balls coated in a layer of candy-like shell and then possibly dabbed into sprinkles or something less chemical-y but just as fun.
The happy sprinkles moment, as you can see, is a step I did not make it to.
Why would I attempt such a thing? Why would I try to create a cake pop?
This is why.
My kiddo had a birthday on Friday and she couldn’t be home because she had to go to drill, and she mentioned that she liked cake pops.
So, I tried. I tried pretty hard.
And I failed.
THE LOST DOG
The disaster pop wasn’t the first time I failed this weekend. It also wasn’t my worst failure.
Some people I met last week at the whoopie pie mile run lost their dog on Friday morning.
I became determined to find him. This dog? He was so lovely. He was quite old and his health had started to deteriorate. I fell in love with him when I met him. So many people did. This was a special dog.
So, Shaun (the man) and I tromped around the woods in the area, searched in backyards. In the middle of an overgrown lot full of spruce and weeds and dandelions, we met up with the sweet humans that this dog loved so much and loved him back so much, and we looked a bit more before we went down on the Shore Path. And I spotted him.
“Is that him?” I asked Shaun.
“It can’t be.”
We didn’t want it to be. But it was.
I spotted him down off the path and in the tidal zone, too late.
About a minute later, while Shaun and I were trying to decide our best course of action, the dog’s humans spotted him, too.
Those of you who know dogs and love dogs know how these two young people felt because these two people? In the short time that I’ve known them have exuded love. They love each other. They love their friends. The love their community. They love running and nature and trails and they really, really loved their dog.
Their pain was hard to see, but it was much harder for them to exude, to feel, to keen, to experience. It was big and raw and painful and full of so much love.
WHAT DISASTERS OF ALL SIZES DO
Disasters make us raw.
Loss makes us raw.
Fear makes us raw.
Love can open us up to all that. Caring can open us up to all that. And we all witness this in our own lives, in others’ lives, in our respective nations.
What we have to do, though . . . what we truly have to do is to try. Try to find the dog. Try to make a cake pop. To make connections with others, ties and bonds that might hurt sometimes but also make us stronger.
We have to try to do the actions that mean that we want to have empathy and love, the actions that make better ties, deeper ties, in our communities.
And when we can’t fix things? When we are too late? Maybe we can think about how we can do it better tomorrow or next time or just stand there and hold the grief and love of others in our hearts.
When you take an action, even if you don’t ‘succeed,’ you empower yourself to take to at least that action. The outcome is something different, something not always within our control, but the action—the trying—that’s what makes us strong.
Michael Jordan lost so many games. He missed so many shots, but he kept trying. Most published novelists? Actors? Inventors? Even business people? Same thing. Trying opens you up to hope and it opens you up to possibility.
That’s important, I think.
But honestly? I don’t know.
I don’t know a ton of things.
I do know that I cannot make a cake pop at all even though I can try and just trying is an act of love and an act of hope and an act of possibility. And I do know that I can love people and dogs and communities with all my messed-up heart. Even strangers. Even barely-known people. And that? That’s a hard and beautiful part of what it is to be a human because it’s about disaster and love and hope and possibility all at once. That’s part of what it’s all about, I think, the all at once, the trying, the continuing on.