← Poetry

Lady Fingers

It was a trifling thing…literally.. …a trifle. Actually, the Christmas Trifle. Picked up on a journey to London, toted home in a handbag and carefully replicated every Christmas season the annual Yuletide Trifle recipe was as much of our family tradition as Doug and Dave’s stockings and Nancy’s cheese potatoes. No trifle? No Christmas. Thus the annual search for a Pike County store that’d handle such an Anglo-exotic item.

Oh, there were substitutes and no one can forget the Christmas we had to make do with angel food sliced into lady-fingerish slabs. It tasted identical to our Pike County palates… But Freida…Freida knew it was not accurate. Inauthentic. Trifle with a small “t.” She never let such a poor substitute again swim in the whipped cream, rum and strawberry ooze.

The fingers of this lady were all about perfection… Her clothing, her meals, her house, the hopes for her family… Even the Trifle showed no signs of trifling.