Failed attempts

Today’s writing prompt in my classroom was to write about a time they have failed at something but didn’t give up.  We are working on cultivating our growth mindsets and focusing on looking at our failures as opportunities to grow.  I shared the following meme with them to get them inspired and then shared a personal experience of my own failure to inspire them to get started.

Now you’re thinking, how did they have any class time to write after listening to all the times Melissa has screwed up in the past 40 years?  I tried to keep it simple and a super concrete example.  I focused on one of the things that still bothers me to this day and that I am still working at achieving.  Something that makes me feel like a failure, not only as a mother, but as a woman and even more so, a Kiehne.  Cinnamon rolls.

I adore cinnamon rolls.  Love the things.  Maybe it is a good thing I don’t know how to make them or I would be making them a lot more often and gaining a lot more weight.  But I feel like I owe it to my grandmother’s legacy to learn to make the damn things and well, the stupid Pillsbury ones in a can don’t even come close.  

My grandmother didn’t even need a recipe.  She went every morning to work at the Harmony House and made the rolls (and pie).  She didn’t have any trouble making them.  Hers didn’t flop or refuse to rise.  She didn’t have to read the recipe 15 times only to miss a step or do something out of order and there sit your little lumps of dead dough.  It’s so incredibly sad to me.  

I’ve tried multiple recipes and I still struggle with getting them to rise.  I took to trying other things for a while, tried making cinnamon roll pancakes.  Fail.  Cinnamon roll waffles.  Fail.  So I’m back to the real deal.  I can make pie, bars, cheesecakes, cupcakes, rolls, hot dish, you name it.  But put bread dough in front of me and I love up.  However, I will, I promise you, I will teach myself to make ooey, gooey, big, fluffy cinnamon rolls.  Until then, my family better learn to love the rejects.  Because I have a feeling there will be more.