Fresh Fruit Parfaits — Sweetness Layered Over Grief

The world has become smaller this year. Mamma is gone. The first Sven is gone. The kitchen holds them both — Mamma in the bread pans on the shelf, the wooden spoon worn smooth where her hand held it for sixty years, the recipe cards in her tiny European hand; the first Sven in the worn spot on the floor under the dining room table where he slept for fourteen years, in the chewed corner of the rocking chair he could never resist, in the absence of barking when the doorbell rings. I am sixty-something and orphaned in the new way: the parental generation gone, the adult generation in charge. Sophie called. Her voice was thick. She said she was sorry about Mamma. She said she had been trying to type a text for an hour and could not. She called instead. We did not say much. We did not need to. Sophie has been to enough funerals at this point to know that the calls after are not for words but for the audible presence of a person on the other end of the line. The presence is the love. The presence is the bridge. The new Sven (Sven the Second) is six months old now. He chewed through my favorite shoe. He jumped on the kitchen counter. He is the worst-behaved dog Duluth has ever produced. I love him completely. He has the energy of a small storm. He is the right thing for the kitchen right now. The first Sven was a steady ocean. This Sven is a storm. Both are necessary in their seasons. Sophie had her baby. A girl. They named her Ingrid, after Mamma. I drove to Minneapolis. I held her — she was tiny, with the same dark hair Sophie had at birth, with eyes that tracked the room with serious attention. I said in Swedish: Välkommen, lilla Ingrid. Welcome, little Ingrid. I cried. Mamma would have approved. Mamma did approve, in the months before she went, when Sophie told her the plan. The name is the bridge. I cooked Rhubarb crumble this week. Rhubarb from the garden, butter-and-oat crumble topping, baked until the rhubarb is jammy. Served warm with vanilla ice cream. The Damiano Center on Thursday: wild rice soup, fifty gallons. Gerald helped me ladle. He told me about a regular who got into a sober house this week — a man named Curtis, who has been coming for soup for eight years and who has been sober for forty-three days now. The soup did not get him sober. The soup was there when he was hungry. The soup is the door, again. The door is the chance. I read one of Paul's books in the evening. The Edmund Fitzgerald chapter. I have read it forty times now. The fortieth time is no less affecting than the first. The transmission still gives me a chill: "We are holding our own." Captain McSorley's last known words. The chapter ends with the wreck on the bottom of Lake Superior, and the men still inside, and the lake refusing to give up its dead. Paul read this chapter to me in 1989, on a winter evening, in the living room. I did not know then that he was reading me his own future. It is enough. It has to be. And on a morning like this, with the lake doing what the lake does and the dog at my feet and the bread on the counter and the kitchen warm enough to live in, it is. It is enough.

The rhubarb crumble came first — that was the grief dish, the one I made with my hands because my hands needed something to do. But after it was gone and the kitchen was quiet again and Sven the Second was finally, briefly, asleep at my feet, I wanted something lighter, something that felt less like the weight of the season and more like the fact that Ingrid exists now, small and serious-eyed and named for Mamma, and that is not a small thing. These Fresh Fruit Parfaits are what I made for that feeling — layered and simple and bright, the kind of thing you assemble rather than cook, because sometimes the kitchen just needs you to be present in it without asking too much of you.

Fresh Fruit Parfaits

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 0 min | Total Time: 15 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 2 cups vanilla yogurt (or plain Greek yogurt with 1 tablespoon honey stirred in)
• 1 cup fresh strawberries, hulled and sliced
• 1 cup fresh blueberries
• 1 cup fresh raspberries or blackberries
• 1 medium banana, sliced
• 1 cup granola
• 2 tablespoons honey, for drizzling
• Fresh mint leaves, for garnish (optional)

Instructions

1. Prepare the fruit. Wash and dry all berries. Hull and slice the strawberries. Slice the banana just before assembling to prevent browning.
2. Layer the base. Spoon about 1/4 cup of yogurt into the bottom of each of four glasses or wide-mouth jars.
3. Add the first fruit layer. Divide the strawberries evenly among the four glasses, layering them over the yogurt.
4. Add granola. Sprinkle approximately 2 tablespoons of granola over the strawberry layer in each glass.
5. Continue layering. Add another 1/4 cup of yogurt to each glass, then layer in the blueberries and banana slices.
6. Finish the top. Add a final spoonful of yogurt and top each parfait with the raspberries or blackberries and a final sprinkle of granola.
7. Drizzle and garnish. Drizzle honey over the top of each parfait. Add a sprig of fresh mint if desired. Serve immediately, or cover and refrigerate for up to two hours.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 285 | Protein: 9g | Fat: 5g | Carbs: 52g | Fiber: 6g | Sodium: 85mg