Oprah and The Birthday Cakes

A lifetime ago, I co-owned and ran a popular French Bakery on Fidalgo Island. Those were days of much activity, many faces, frantic schedules and not near enough time to sit and reflect. Add to that the fact that I was seemingly always either pregnant or nursing and you will get a pretty good idea of my semi-constant level of overwhelm.

During that time period, I tended to give my attention mostly to:

1) what was right in front of me

2) whatever was at risk of burning

3) whoever was teething

One busy fall afternoon, the phone rang and a very nice man informed me that he had purchased some of our famous chocolate cookies, while visiting Anacortes, a few weeks prior. He said that he had found them to be so extraordinary that he wanted us to ship him a few dozens to his work address, in Chicago. He then went on to explain that he was working as producer of the Oprah show and that he knew everyone on the show would enjoy the cookies.

Thinking back, I am imagining that he may, at that point in the conversation, have paused to let me absorb the potential implications of his phone call. Maybe he did not - but I like to think that he did. Well, to me, his call held no implications greater than the inconvenience of having to box the darn cookies, walk over to the post office and ship them. I had not watched TV in so long, I am pretty sure I had only a very, very vague idea of who Oprah was, if any. My world was pretty much limited to the 5 blocks between the bakery and our home and there was never enough time for anything, let alone television or magazines. I know.... I know ...... believe me, I know. As I said, this was another lifetime.

So, we shipped the cookies and for the next several months, the guy called and reordered pretty regularly. Every time, I would see it as a slight inconvenience and was kinda hoping that he would eventually tire of the super-duper chocolatey goodies. You see, I had birthday cakes to make and customers to keep happy, babies to feed and could not help but being mildly annoyed at the distraction: I had to make money, here!

Ha.

Well, sure enough, the calls stopped coming and I was left once again, to my very real and very in-front-of-my-face concerns. Good.

Well, of course it was NOT good. Of course it was soooooooooo nearsighted and down right, well ... not good. Geee.

Should this happen today, I would be on the next plane to Chicago, delivering the cookies myself, getting testimonials from Oprah, milking this opportunity for all it could give me, and getting a huge amount of publicity for the bakery. I would make enough cookies to feed the show’s audience, I would move to Chicago, I would .... Ok, I am exaggerating. BUT I sure would do ... something.

Yikes.

Yet somehow, when I think back about it, such as I am doing right now, I am not hugely frustrated. In fact I am almost amused and I even feel a little tenderness for the young woman that I was. Part of me wishes I had known better, that I had slowed down and raised my floured nose from the mixer long enough to see what a great opportunity that was. And part of me knows that it simply was not the right time.

It’s okay.

And, you know what? the lessons live on much longer than any publicity stunt ever would have:

Lesson #1
Slow down!

Lesson #2 
Pay attention

Lesson #3
Get off automatic pilot

Lesson #4
Do not allow yourself to become so overwhelmed that shipping a box of cookies becomes a burden. Cookies are good and they are important. They need to be shared. A lot.

Lesson #5
Opportunities come and go and if we are not ready, well, we are not ready. The damage comes not from missing an opportunity but from beating ourselves up forever after. New opportunities will present themselves if we open up to them.

So, here I am, years later and still shaking my head.

I bet that guy was shaking his for a long time....

Where in your life, might you be missing out on a call from Oprah because you have to make a birthday cake?

Oh, and if anyone knows Oprah, please send her my e-mail address. I will be so good this time ... I promise.