What happens to a dream deferred?

On Saturday night I found out what happens to a dream deferred it sits in your heart waiting on you to open it back up.

As a child I wanted to be a pastry chef. I planned on going to Paris and study with the best of the best. I even took French hoping to learn the language. Instead I joined the Navy and while in the Navy I talked to the cooks who discouraged me on being a chef. Long hours, never see your family and you get fat. I was young and I didn’t realize that sometimes you sacrifice things to become what you want. So I pushed that dream to the back and moved on to something else, my second passion, writing.

My soon to be three year old is crazy about the movie, The Mummy. He’s probably watched it a million times. He said for his birthday he wanted a mummy cake. I went on the hunt online to see if I could find a mummy cake I could duplicate. I found a few pictures and bought all my ingredients for the cake. Most of the pictures used fondant to wrap the mummy, but since I didn’t have any experience with fondant I decided to use icing instead.

As I worked on the cake, those old feeling floated up to the surface. What if I’d studied in France and learned from the masters? Would I be working for the government? Would I have my own cake decorating business? Would I have tons of experience with fondant the new cake sensation?

I hate what if questions because you can’t answer them. I know that the dream is still there and that I can do something about it. I’m going to look into taking some classes in cake decorating and baking. At least I’ll complete the dream and there won’t be any more what ifs.

What dream have you deferred?