Sugar Coated

So I am ditching words, literature and the infamous University of Chicago for a world of sweetness.

I am set to work at a bakery.

Really - the job is waiting for me. It stays warm next to the ovens that deliver mighty goodness to the neighborhood and soon - hopefully - way beyond.
It is an exclusive job.
Just for me.

When I try to sometimes stop and think about it - I am comforted by the fact that it just makes sense. I don't know what the faculty members of my department will have to say about the idea and my apparently inexplicable change of 'career' (and why should I care?); I am even unsure of how it will be received by some family members. By the very ones who have been asking the same question over the last 7 years ('When will you be done?' - sigh and rolling of eyes in tow) while questioning the choice I made of studying something so 'unpractical' (polite version) and totally useless.

But I know that my grandma Odette ('mamie') would have told me to go ahead and do it.

First and foremost- because she was that kind of woman: loving and supportive. Kind, sweet, gentle and generous. I remember very clearly one cold and windy afternoon waiting for the bus with my mom in front of the cathedral of my hometown. I was about 5 years old, and curious about the statues gracing the portal.
"Who are these people up there?" I asked, vaguely pointing in their direction - you know, the way only little children do.
"These are saints. People who were so good during their lives that they are now in the sky with Jesus"
".....(trying to process the information)....well, mamie has to be with them!"

The truth is, I never really changed my mind. She raised me for two years after my parents' divorce, and was an incessant source of light and warmth. She has been gone for 11 years now but I still think of her every day. And always will.

But despite all her qualities mamie couldn't have been a saint.
See - she was not perfect.
She had one major flaw - a sin that I have to call by its French name since the traditional English translation (on top of being inaccurate) conjures such an ugly image totally at odds with the dear face of my grandma: 'gourmandise'. It's not the Christian gluttony. Far from it. Rather a very epicurean 'fondness for sweet'. The thing that makes you skip your meat to go straight for dessert. And have a second serving, if possible.

Yep, mamie's weakness was definitely on the sweet side, and boy did she pass it on to me! Through numerous trips to tea salons where we would share all types of fancy tarts, macaroons, ganaches, eclairs and 'petits fours'. And through baking sessions in her kitchen of more than 40 years. Lots of gaiety and cheerfulness but also anticipation, delightfulness, content and pure enjoyment...
So seeing her granddaughter work at a 'patisserie' (a place that sells cakes and cookies - 'petits gateaux' as we fondly say) would have probably made her damn happy - no matter the circumstances.

Having been "sugar coated" by her in many ways - it was only logical for me to end up at Bonjour. Just makes sense.
Merci, mamie, et bon appetit!