I wake up at three every morning and I wonder why the hell I’m still doing this. It started because I needed something that wasn't cleaning up after a sick husband and a daughter who can’t keep her life together. For forty years, I was the one who handled the diapers, the catheters, the bills, and the endless, suffocating silence of a house that needed me to be its spine... I learned to bake from a goddamn library book because it was the only thing I could do while they slept. Now I have this shop. People line up around the block. They call me a "master." What a joke. Every time one of those little punks from a culinary school walks in with their pristine white coats and their talk of "hydration levels" and "lamination techniques," I want to scream. They stand there, sniffing my croissants like they’re judging fine wine, looking for a flaw I probably made because I didn’t go to school in France... I’m just a woman who spent half her life in a kitchen because she had nowhere else to hide. I didn't study under a Michelin star chef. I studied under a flickering light in a kitchen that smelled like bleach and disappointment while waiting for the sound of a cough from the bedroom. Last Tuesday, this kid—he couldn't have been more than twenty-five—comes in. He’s got the diploma practically tattooed on his forehead. He takes a bite of my signature almond croissant, closes his eyes, and starts talking about the "structure." STRUCTURE. I wanted to slap the plate out of his hand... I didn’t learn structure in a classroom. I learned it by holding a dying man upright for six years while the world moved on without me.