I think now I know why I have held on to dread for so long. It’s not all explained away in the behavior I saw modeled to me. It’s high time to move past that reasoning. Last night as my husband and I clinked our wine glasses watching tall ships in the harbor, I talked myself somewhere into this realization:

By worrying, some bad wiring in my brain has programmed me to think that I am preparing myself for whatever ill is inevitably to come. I have thought all along that planning any disasters will provide me the ability to sidestep them when some version of said disaster becomes reality. Don’t know how, but yesterday I came to understand that fear will only expedite what it is I worry about. I inexplicably understood at once that fear handicaps me and escorts me into a disadvantage, not advantage. I was calm when I realized this, but I also knew, it would take some time to undo a lifetime of mental scenario creating.

I get that way when my kids are with other people besides me, even if it is my parents, in-laws, sister-in-law, close friends. Even when I am supposed to be realxing - like date night away from the kids who are with my parents at the Zoo - I can’t completely unwind because the kids aren’t with me, next to me, in my line of sight. I like to hear their breathing.

So I have to drop the dread. It’s stupid and contrary to what I have seen all my life, it is not useful. And I’ve got to do this by myself.

A glass of wine usually helps me relax and undo a puzzle or two. Hubby and I usually talk about ourselves or the kids on date night. Either that, or we pretend to be ESPN sportscasters doing play by play analyses of (single looking for hook up) people at the restaurants where we have our dinner dates.

After a glass of wine, after dinner (crispy calamri with spicy Vietnamese dipping sauce, Kobe beef burger with smoked bacon, bleu cheese, parmesan fries, Caesar Salad with anchovy toast and blackened filet of salmon) I was ready to misbehave with chocolate. As it turned out, I really, really did misbehave.

Hubby and I went to a local dessert place where the line was out the door and about 25 people deep. I went inside to look at the dessert menu and specials and YAY! they had what I’d been craving for weeks…chocolate pots de creme. I set my heart on this one thing to bring me ultimate gratification. Got ready or the sweet, deep, rich chocolate flavor and silky texture. “Guess what they have guess what they have?!” I exclaimed to hubby. He was second in his excitement only to me, me who looked lovingly at the plate of everyone who was already enjoying theirs, with yellow flowers as garnish, whipped cream delightfully added in some shape to the dessert.

Pots de creme isn’t a mousse, not a brulee. Pots de creme I think is closer to a pudding. Chocolate pudding was my favorite as a child until the 80s when everyone went crazy for chocolate mousse and I was no different. Chocolate just…gives me a fix that I need.

We finally got to the front of the line, and the pots de creme were all gone from the dessert case. “You’re not out of pots de creme, are you?” I asked. The girl working the register looked at me reluctantly, but like she thought I could handle what she had to say.

She was wrong.

The pots de creme were all gone, she said. “We waited in that line to be told your chocolate pots de creme are gone?” I glared at the poor girl. Not my style to do this to front line people.

She nodded her head uncaringly at me, returning the favor.

At this point, I am a little girl wanting her chocolate pudding, and everyone is going to be as miserable as I am if I don’t get it.

I sat at the little outside table sipping tea. “Honey, eat your chocolate tiramisu,” said my husband, eating his toasted coconut something. The girl at the register had tried to talk him into a bran muffin. Saturday night in a hip part of town where desserts are the main thing and she tried to sell him a bran muffin. I wanted out of this place, I was suspicious, disappointed, and there was that feeling again. The I’m not in control feeling, the what do you mean I can’t depend on what I thought I was getting feeling.

I sulked for a little while until I saw my own little girls, and little guy. When I told my parents about my dessert deprivation, my mother mocked me. “No pots de creme? I can’t imagine anything more awful than that!” She said. Well, I can. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. In fact, the worst thing that I just imagined, I forgot it already.

I did an online search today of chocolate pots de creme. They’re not that hard to make. Quite attainable actually, even for a novice pastry chef like me. It is no use standing by when the ability to find the right balance of bittersweet chocolate and sugar is so within my own reach. I can taste the dessert already. And I am not at the mercy of any variable or anyone…I can do this by myself.