The Impossible Choice

Today




























Our little apartment is totally silent when I slip out of the sheets. I fumble for my glasses in the dark, quickly slip into old clothes and tiptoe out of my room. I take advantage of the calm to go get the gift I hid in the backyard of the pub, one floor below where I'm staying. Despite the creaking wood under my shoes, I go up the stairs making as little noise as possible but I know that the minutes are counted. Although my daughter is usually a late riser, she always opens her eyes at dawn on her birthday. I place the surprise in the middle of our tiny living room before hurrying to the kitchen where I place her favorite cup on the table. I take out a bottle of milk, the dark chocolate then I turn on the gas. The flames crackle but eventually stabilize to give me time to heat the milk with a few grains of brown vanilla sugar that I prepare once or twice a year. When it reaches the right temperature, I dip squares of dark chocolate into the hot milk while stirring gently. A delicious brown foam forms on the surface and I smile.




























I've always loved mixing ingredients, experimenting with my own food, but I didn't really start cooking until we settled down here in Ireland. All it took was one day that was a little more complicated than the others, a loneliness that was a little too clinging to my skin and a few ideas that were a little too gloomy for me to rob the small local convenience store, a makeshift baby carrier attached against my chest, a few coins jingling at the bottom of my pocket. That day, I spread out everything I had found on the table in my little kitchen and I closed my eyes. I emptied myself, looked for a corner of calm in the middle of the tumult of my thoughts. And an image appeared behind my eyelids. A puff topped with a cracker and garnished with a passion-chocolate cream. A memory of my adolescence, when I wandered the streets, without a future and without a penny in my pocket. I was fifteen I think. I had passed a pastry shop displaying its marvels in the window. I had seen this cabbage, I had only seen him. He was perfect. Perfectly round, perfectly filled, perfectly enticing, perfectly indulgent. I had imagined its taste on my tongue, this paradise in my mouth. When I got home to my host parents, I asked them if they could buy me something to make one myself. The one who was hosting me simply replied that the race budget was tight and that we couldn't afford to buy everything that came to mind. I didn't insist, she was already nice enough to take in a kid no one really wanted, I wasn't going to risk her not wanting me anymore. So I forgot this cabbage and my somewhat crazy desires to create something with these hands that no one believed in.

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