As the coronavirus pandemic lingers and intensifies, I’ve been looking for examples of resilience. Who in my orbit has demonstrated the ability to adapt well to change or keep going in the face of adversity?
Turns out, I didn’t have to look very far.
My eleven-year-old niece, Natalie, found her resiliency in the kitchen.
Natalie and I began baking together when she was three. She donned a bright pink tutu, sky-blue leggings, and a Disney Princess tiara to make Christmas cookies for Santa. We tied on our matching aprons (a gift from her other aunt, my sister), the white fabric printed with cupcakes and edged with pink and yellow polka dot frills.
I mixed and rolled out the sugar cookie dough. I placed my hands over hers as she kneeled on the bar stool at the kitchen island, the two of us pressing down together to cut out the cookies. Feeling the shape of her soft little hand underneath mine, I smiled, grateful for the opportunity to teach this first baking lesson.
Once they had baked and cooled, Natalie helped decorate them. The frosted cookies looked messy, with imprints where she’d swiped her finger for a taste of frosting. I laughed and reached over to wipe her face when we finished. She wrinkled her nose and squirmed, finally taking the towel from my hands to do it herself.
In the years since, we’ve spent hours in the kitchen making cookies, cupcakes, and cakes.
“Baking is all about making messes,” I often remind her—and me. It’s a small lesson in resilience. Instead of getting upset about the milk she spilled on the floor or the flour I dumped all over the counter, we laugh.
The bake sale
On an unusually warm November day in 2016, when she was just seven, Natalie decided she wanted to have a bake sale. My spouse and I were caring for Natalie and her younger brother while their parents were out of town for a few days. Natalie and I had baked cupcakes the day before, decorating them with blue frosting and sprinkles.
“You want to have a bake sale? Today?” I asked. I’d started back to graduate school that fall and keeping up with coursework had worn me down. The end of the contentious and divisive 2016 election season was just a few days away, and I’d begun to lose my faith in humanity.
I was sure no one would be interested in buying cupcakes.
“Yes! Can we? Please?”
I relented; her tenacity impossible to resist.
My husband set up a table and chairs for us at the end of the driveway. Natalie made a sign. “1 cupcake 25 cents,” it read. A bargain, but I let her set the price. She added a heart underneath the “25 cents.” The red lettering on the small pink sign would hardly be visible from the street. She’ll be so disappointed when no one comes to buy her cupcakes, I thought to myself.
“I’m so excited!” Natalie sat in the small folding chair behind the kid-sized card table, turned to me and smiled, revealing the toothless gap where her top front baby teeth had recently fallen out. “I’ve always wanted to have a bake sale!”
I pulled up my adult-sized folding chair and sat beside her, feeling like a giant.
“We’ll just have to see if any customers come today. A bake sale in November is unusual, you know.” I wanted to temper her expectations, since mine were low at that point.
We’d been sitting for no more than five minutes when a black SUV coming down the block swerved quickly from the right side of the road to the left, pulling over at the end of the driveway. A woman hopped out of the car.
“Hi, Natalie! What’s this? Are you having a bake sale?”
I didn’t know who she was, but she obviously knew Natalie.
“Uh huh,” Natalie nodded. “We’ve got cupcakes for twenty-five cents.”
“They look delicious! I’ll take four, please.”
Natalie’s face lit up, and she smiled from ear to ear. The woman dropped a five-dollar bill into the plastic Disney Princesses cup on the table.
“You can keep the change,” she winked. She climbed back into her SUV and drove off.
“She lives in the house behind us,” Natalie said. “Sometimes her daughter babysits for us.”
A few minutes later, the neighbors across the street walked over and bought three cupcakes. Not long after, the next-door neighbor kids came and bought three. Just like that, we had sold half of the cupcakes.
As we sat and waited for more customers, I picked up the cup of money and looked inside.
“Wow, you’ve done pretty well—and we’ve only been out here for a few minutes!” I shook the cup, rattling the change inside.
“Yeah,” Natalie responded. “But I don’t care about the money. That’s not why I wanted to have a bake sale.”
“Oh, really?” I turned to face her. “So, why did you want to do it?”
“I just wanted to do something kind for other people.” She smiled, her long, light brown hair blowing across her face.
My heart melted. One or two customers wouldn’t have been a setback for Natalie; the sale was a success, regardless of the income.
Baking in a pandemic
Since March, my time with Natalie has been limited because of quarantine and social distancing. Luckily, I’d been demoted from “head baker” to “baking assistant” months earlier, offering my advice when asked, but mainly pulling pans out of the oven and cleaning up the mess. So, although I long to be back in the kitchen with her, I’ve watched from afar as Natalie continues to infuse her baking with kindness and love. She’s shown a resilience I’m not sure I had at her age.
While the adults in her life managed the uncertainty of an ongoing pandemic, she made fondant for the first time, sculpting a blue Sonic the Hedgehog figure for one child’s birthday cake and a video game controller for another’s.
Each week—sometimes more than once a week—my sister texts photos of the latest creation.
Natalie made her first carrot cake and decorated it with orange and green frosting so the top of the round cake looked like each triangle-shaped piece was carrot. Pastel buttercream roses adorned a coconut cake—another first—baked for a friend’s mom for Mother’s Day.
Her teachers were the lucky recipients of freshly baked chocolate cupcakes to honor them during Teacher Appreciation Week. She baked a red, white, and blue marble cake for the Fourth of July and decorated it with a flag made of buttercream roses. And best of all, I blew out the candles lovingly placed on top of a delicious lemon cake—complete with lemon curd and lemon buttercream frosting—to celebrate my 50th birthday.
No doubt that Natalie, an avid dancer who is always on the go, would not have been able to stretch her creativity in this way without coronavirus forcing her to stay home. During a hard time, separated from her friends and kept from activities she loves, she’s made the best of it. She’s reminded me that even on the hardest days, creativity, kindness, and love abound.
I wrote my book to teach my nieces about resilience. But it turns out Natalie has taught me, too.
Where have you seen examples of resilience recently? Comment below or connect with me on social media.
