What Holds Us Up

By: Zi Yao Cao Su

Love, I have learned, is not grand or flawless. It is not big hugs and kisses when you walk in the door, and the words “I love you” before bed. Sometimes it comes dusted in flour, rising slowly in the hours before the break of dawn. When I was three, my parents divorced, my mother passed to illness, and my father was never to be seen again. Five hundred dollars every month was his only footprint ever since. So I learned love in my grandmother’s bakery. Not as something spoken often, but as the warm bread she left cooling on the counter. I woke each morning to the scent of fresh cinnamon rolls kissed with vanilla, or, on some days, the savory pull of extra‑chewy cheddar‑jalapeño bagels.

My grandmother always insisted that any baked good, especially bread, was best when fresh. It was the principle she kept in every corner of her life. Even on the grandest holidays, every bun, every cupcake began at 3 a.m. Which meant my cream‑cheese‑slathered cinnamon rolls were already proofing before the sun had even thought to rise.

I never thought much about the life beyond our bakery’s glass display case. My world was built of sugar, yeast, and techniques of baked goods. But then, one Tuesday changed my life forever. As I was making my way to the bakery after school, a poster appeared on the bulletin board outside the post office that read The Grand Regional Baking Championship — Winner earns a scholarship to Paris.

The École de Pâtisserie. The legend I wouldn’t ever dare to dream of. The factory of the top pastry chefs in the world, where sugar became art, and where my baking hero, Everett Bernard, was produced.

The moment I saw it, I felt a quiet click inside me, like a lock turning. However, I knew that with Christmas approaching and Grandmother’s old age, the bakery needed me more than ever in the busiest month of the year. The following evening, I signed up. I didn’t tell a single soul, especially my grandmother, as I feared facing my own selfishness. I thought if I just won it and showed the money, it would solve all my worries.

The competition’s theme was “Your Dream”, and for me, nothing spoke more of my dream than a croquembouche. It was more than a nightmare to make, it was my dream for my future in Paris. Elegant and fragile enough to collapse, yet worth rebuilding every time. It was golden and showed my very own ambition of building a strong base to the top with every profiterole. It was me.

Thoughts were easier said than written. In the cramped warmth of our little bakery, it proved impossible. My croquembouche tower leaned, wobbled, and collapsed in sticky heaps. Blisters grew on my skin from hot caramel, my patience thinned, but I told myself my only opportunity was worth more than all the suffering. By the night before the competition, I had perfect profiteroles, hollow on the inside, golden, crispy on the outside. What struck me most was that the pastry cream tasted terrible. Nevertheless, the assembly didn’t bring a miracle. It was like any other day. Attempting to salvage a slanted tower, I watched another slow-motion collapse, another pile of shattered hope. I sat on the flour‑dusted floor, my apron stiff with sugar, and I cried my first tears since the day I realized no one could or would show up for my school’s family picnic.

That's when my grandmother found me. She didn’t ask a single question. She didn’t scold me. She sat there and told me about her daughter, as if she knew every single detail about what I had gone through. I learned that my mother w​​​​asn’t the most talented baker, but she had the biggest passion. Her pastries rarely stood tall, but always made people close their eyes and savor each bite when they tasted them. As she stood up, she left my mother’s recipe diary on my lap.

“Bake like her”, she said. “With your heart, not your fear.”

The next morning, under the sharp lights of the competition hall, I worked slowly, breathing with each movement. For the first time, my grandmother closed the bakery in December just to be part of the audience. I decided I wasn’t going to be traditional and fill the profiteroles with a plain old pastry cream. In my mom’s book, a page marked June 15th, “Coffee and Coconut Birthday Cake”, caught my eye. It was my grandmother’s birthday, with tick marks for each year my mother baked it. Judging from the amount of hazelnut desserts in the book, I knew my mother wouldn’t give up hazelnut for the world. Despite time concerns, I was going to make three fillings: hazelnut praline from my mother’s hazelnut tart, coffee, and coconut from the cake, and the flavor of nostalgia, cinnamon with vanilla. After the conversation yesterday, I thought about my dream. My dream, yes, is to be the best of the best in Paris, but it is also to bring my loved ones with me. Just as each choux puff in a croquembouche holds the others up to make something taller than any could be alone.

My hands were shaking as if I had not owned them for a decade. As I spun the caramel with the croquembouche getting higher and higher, it looked like my best attempt. It was straight and glistened in all its beauty until I stacked the last one. It collapsed with loud gasps.

I didn’t dare look up into the audience, to face my grandmother’s eyes, in fear of disappointment. That minute felt longer than my entire childhood, thoughts being “it's over” flew through my head. Then my grandmother’s words moved through me like warm bread in my chest. I gathered the fallen puffs, I salvaged what I had, and I reassembled it into a small crown shape with uneven caramel as I was running out. There are so many more details I could do, but it was too late, the timer went off, competition was over.

When the judges tasted it, their eyes widened. “Delicate,” one murmured. Another smiled. The room felt hushed, the clatter of plates and impulsive thoughts fading into the background. For a heartbeat, I thought I had them. I thought Paris was mine. But when they announced the winner, the confetti fell for someone else.

I didn’t win Paris that day. Nevertheless, I knew I had won a lot. I won more than the smiles on the judges’ faces and the pride of my grandmother; I won myself. I won the girl who could stand on fragments of a broken dream and keep building. I won the courage to bake from the heart, not out of fear. I won the voice that no longer needed anyone’s permission to chase her dream. I won the true Marie Ann.

I walked out holding my grandmother’s hand as I carried our recipe book home, the pages warm against my palms. What holds us up isn’t sugar or caramel, but the hands we hold, the love we carry, and the people who keep us standing when our towers fall. What holds us up is each other.