Bitter With The Sweet: An Unforgettable Chocolate Cake!

Every day Leonard takes a stroll through The Crossing. Not by himself, but steadied by his mother Lisa, or his aunt Lydia, or his caregiver Allen. His arms and legs are spindly and cannot support his weight. His large head, with its freckled face hangs absently off to one side. Leonard has been living in this world for nearly three decades. His body has grown longer and bigger as the years have passed, but within his head, they say, remain the thoughts of a child of only a few months. What is in his heart and soul is a mystery.

Lisa is not with Leonard’s father anymore. She has a new life now, taking care of this precious grown son, her current husband, and her other children now nearing their teens. They live a quiet life in The Crossing.

Lisa is a small woman with fine blonde hair and narrow wrists. Leonard is a good foot taller than Lisa. When she walks with him, she wraps an arm around his waist and lets his body lean against her. He doesn’t have a vocabulary. Cannot enunciate words.

Still waters run deep. That is what I think of when I see Leonard’s mom, Lisa. Her face is calm like lake waters.

It is not the life she originally envisioned for herself. Through her twenties, she lived with Barry, Leonard’s father. They lived that “art-style” life. She was a potter. He was a writer and a charmer. They traveled and lived in other countries. She taught pottery, patiently demonstrating how to pull the wet clay up from the spinning pottery wheel, as it danced and wobbled to finally find its form. A vase. A cup. Maybe a bowl, blooming from its muddy base like a flower. Barry taught philosophy, his words floating through the air, kissing and nibbling at the young ears of his students.

In 1974, Lisa and Barry came to the Crossing. They bought a little house down the road from Lisa’s cousin Lydia. It was a small, working-class house, with no frills and little space. They poked a hole in the ceiling to raise it up high enough so that Barry, a tall and bulky man, could stand up without bumping his head. Lisa made pottery in the basement. Barry wrote poetry while gazing out on the river waters passing in front of their small house.

Barry liked women a lot and this marred their marriage the way an open-pit mine does the earth. Lisa had a cure for Barry’s straying eyes. She got pregnant. As so many women before her, she believed the myth that a new baby would make things better. And the pregnancy was a happy time for them. Full of promises and shared dreams of watching a little child grow.

Lisa’s labor was so intense she hallucinated. After 48 hours, the doctor finally used forceps to rip Leonard from her tiny frame. Unfortunately, this happened too late. Although they didn’t know it at his birth, Leonard had been deprived of oxygen. For only a few months Lisa enjoyed being a new mom to a beautiful fat baby with tufts of brown hair.

Then the seizures began and Lisa noticed a certain dullness to her sweet baby’s eyes. Barry saw Leonard as a reflection on him. The baby looked like him, but this version of him slobbered and drooled and shook and made odd primitive noises. It was more than Barry could stand, so he left Leonard to Lisa’s care. He went on to write poems and novels in which he explored from afar the despair and drama of his child’s brokenness.

We all have these opportunities to revise ourselves. Some come softly. Some come in deep nights of labor and blood. Lisa had a calling that ran more deeply through her than all her artist yearnings and God-given talent. It was through tending to her child and all his fragments that Lisa discovered her grace. She went back to school to obtain a degree in special education. Now, her days in the classroom are filled with an amazing array of tender souls: teens who still wear diapers; young people blessed with brilliant minds, but whose nervous systems can't communicate the commands for walking, eating, talking; big, bodied humans who open their mouths and speak with the innocence of a toddler. All of them variations from their parents' original expectations. Like the potter that she is, she lets their form be revealed in whatever way it may, however unstandardized. Afterall, in pottery, sometimes the most interesting vessels are the ones whose forms are irregular, even misshaped.

After a full day with her “irregular vessels” at her work, she comes home to her current husband and the two children they share. She comes home to Leonard, this mysterious vessel of humanity who is her son. She feeds him. She lets him swing from a specially designed chair that hangs in a room off the kitchen of their now expansive, remodeled home. She takes him for walks through The Crossing. Dogs come out to greet them, touching their noses gently to Leonard's jeans as he passes. He moves his head about, perhaps taking in the colors of the flowers blooming in people’s yards, enjoying the white clouds scuttering across a blue sky, or listening to the whimsical chatter of the birds.

Decades after his dramatic entrance into the world, he lives this simple life with his family in their river home in The Crossing.

“Life takes you where it wants to take you and gives you the lessons you need to learn,” Lisa says without elaboration or self-pity, but with the diligence of a woman who knows the purest love is unconditional and can take you places you never imagined you could go.

Bittersweet Chocolate Cake

(adapted from Ina Garten's recipe.)

• 1 cup unsalted butter, removing one tablespoon to use for buttering the pan.

• 8 ounces bittersweet chocolate chips

• 1 cup sugar

• 4 large eggs, lightly beaten

• 1/2 teaspoon instant coffee granules. I use Cafe’ Bustelo, but any instant coffee will do.

• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour, plus extra for the pan

• Sweetened whipped cream or vanilla ice cream

• 1 tablespoon confectioners sugar for sprinkling on top of cake when baked.

• Fresh strawberries, sliced and sprinkled with sugar.

Directions: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and flour an 8-inch springform pan.

Place a large heatproof bowl over a pot of simmering water, making sure the water doesn’t touch the bowl. Put the butter and chocolate in the bowl, stirring occasionally, until the chocolate melts. Take the bowl off the heat and set aside.

First, whisk the sugar into the chocolate mixture, then whisk in the eggs, coffee, and salt, whisking until the mixture is combined and smooth. Sprinkle on the flour and fold it in with a rubber spatula until it’s incorporated.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and place it on a sheet pan. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes , until the cake doesn’t wobble when you jiggle the pan and the top is slightly cracked.

Remove from the oven and cool completely on a baking rack. The cake will deflate as it cools. Run a small knife around the cake and remove the sides of the pan. Use a tight-meshed sieve to distribute confectioners sugar on the top. Cut the cake in wedges and serve warm or at room temperature with sweetened whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. Add a tablespoon of sliced, sugared strawberries or raspberriewwith.