Frosting Will Fix It

Every year for as long as I can remember, my mother has crafted the most beautiful gingerbread houses. The day after Thanksgiving, when all the rest of the world was shopping, my mother sat studiously at her kitchen table and hand crafted a classy gingerbread house that would rest on a board (special made by dad) with a light inside. At night, she would turn the light on, and it would send the jolly-rancher windows all a-glow. The smell of gingerbread would waft through the house. The family would pick at the scraps, and we’d enjoy the cheery little house every Christmas season…
Come New Year’s Eve, we would SMASH her houses and devour them. Was the candy over a month old? Yeah. Did that stop 6 children?
What do you think?

We loved every bit of it.

When I moved to college, I missed the gingerbread houses. Sure, it was there when I visited on holiday, but it wasn’t at MY house. It was at Mom’s house. When I was married, I decided I needed to have a house of my own.
You know how some girls are so much like their mothers that it’s uncanny? Well, I’m not. And it’s not a good thing, folks. My mother does things so neatly -so in order.
When gingerbread house making comes to our house? Boy, look out. There’s candy flying everywhere and burned sugar crusted to the counter…
I clean it up when I’m done -I promise! But the thing is: Mother would never allow a mess like that around her hands, and she doesn’t HAVE to because she just goes about the whole process much much neater. Neatly? More neat?
Anyway, she’s a champion.
She was so patient with me that first year I made one. She let me borrow a pattern for a small “Love Shack.” It was about half the size of her big house, and just perfect for a newlywed couple.
I mixed the dough with her. I cut the pieces with her. She showed me the ins-and-outs of house crafting.
“If the gingerbread gets too hard to cut, just put it back in the oven for a little bit.”
“Use dark karo syrup instead of molasses for the dough if you want it to be more firm.”
And
The MOST important thing my mother ever taught me about baking (drum roll please):
“Frosting will fix it.”
I can hear her say it, you know. She had to say it so very many times to me.
I glued my chimney on crooked.
“Frosting will fix it,” she said.
I glued my ROOF on wrong.
“Frosting will fix it.”
One wall was backward.
“Frosting will fix it.”
And you know what my mother never, ever did? She never took the house from me. She never said, “Oh, here. Let me just DO it.”
She just stood next to me, offered advice, let me do with it what I would and assured me no matter HOW BAD it got…
“Frosting will fix it.”

All while Mom and I were in the kitchen putting our gingerbread houses together, my husband and the rest of The Boys were out on the first day of a two-day round up. As they all piled back in the warm, gingerbready kitchen that night my husband regarded my house with the utmost pride.
My little brother, on the other hand, was more honest.
“Aw, it’s okay Eash,” he said, putting a comforting little 8-year old arm around me, “It’s your first one.”

We all know that my mother is the smartest woman alive. This we all know. She denies it, of course (unless she’s facing off with my Dad in which case -she IS the wisest).
But I honestly think my mother is wiser than she knows. She teaches life lessons without meaning to, and the lessons that come from her are invaluable.
Remember her Why Not Philosophy? If you’ve never read that post, please do. No matter how many times I read it, I bawl like a baby.
Moms have a way of making us do that… and it all started with our first spanking.

Yesterday as I pulled two 9-inch Red Velvet circle cakes out of the oven and frosted them, I chanted over and over in my head.
“Frosting will fix it.”
One cake stuck stubbornly to the bottom. As I stacked them, cake flaked off into the frosting everywhere and I had to make more and more frosting to… FIX everything.
I could hear my mother’s voice saying to me that frosting would fix it, and I thought of her as I dotted red stars on what was about to be (I hoped) a Captain America Shield Cake.
She made our birthday cakes -they were always neat and wonderful. I loved them. Her cakes were beautiful. Mine?
Well… think of the sloppiest cake you can. Do you have it in your mind? My cakes are one baby step up from that. But I keep making them anyway because…
you guessed it.
Frosting will fix it.

As I thought about my mother and her Frosting Philosophy (My mom has no idea she HAD this many philosophies), my thoughts turned to my Savior.
I can see myself sometimes as he sees me: a sloppy little kid trying to navigate this maze of life. He’s letting me choose which way to go, never straying far from my side, and NEVER making my decisions for me.
Like my mother who stood patiently by and let me make mistakes, so does the Savior. He never once will say, “Here. Just let me DO it.”
He waits for me to ask questions -to ask for help. Then he gently fills me with a loving feeling when I do glue my figurative chimney on crooked and he says
“The Atonement will fix it.”
I don’t have any pictures handy of that first house. Boy, how I WISH I did. But guess what I do have? More pictures of different houses. I didn’t give up! I kept making more and more houses! Last year I forgot some of mom’s advice (used straight molasses) and my house was a wretched mess that never made it to the frosting stage.
It made it to the trash. That’s all.
But the more I try, the better I get. No matter what, I always make mistakes. My houses are never perfect, EVER. But you can’t tell because I utilized the HECK out of my frosting.
Here’s my second house:

My third house:

Proof of the mess that ensues when I embark on something that requires frosting to fix it:

And so as the years go on, I continue to try and I continue to mess up (literally. I mean, do you SEE that picture?) and turn to my Savior with “whoopsie-daisy” eyes, and He is always right there for me.
“The Atonement will fix it.”
And in the end what comes out is actually something really quite amazing. Now I’m on to teach Mom’s Frosting Philosophy to the Next Generation. Here’s one of our pictures from last year’s gingerbread making madness:

And here’s a picture of me instilling the words that have held me through many-a-tearfully-failed-project:
“It’s okay. Frosting will fix it.”

And -just like the Atonement -the frosting DID fix it. And thank goodness because I had one hopeful little boy that would have be crushed if he didn’t get a birthday cake: