Almost every morning I have the idea that I will quickly finish the chores so I can drive to Manhattan for freshly baked bread and a flat white. It requires very little to change my mind - too cold, too tired, too far, too wasteful, too fattening. It also elicits a touch of depression. A genuine bakery does not exist in Topeka. A bakery is too woke, I guess.
Next, inevitably, I think I could bake my own bread. There is enough time in my day, every day, that I should get in the habit of baking my own bread. I wonder if I lived on freshly baked bread and whole milk, would I eventually weigh a thousand pounds or would I lose weight? Become young again? Be happy despite the "generally wretched times" we live in?
My grandmother often made bread, baked in the oven of a large wood burning stove. The aroma of the rising dough was an elixir of comfort and love that I experienced no where else in my life, not then and not since. The yeast and baking bread and burning wood created a deeply satisfying warmth that nourished me to my very center. Grandma loved me. Simply. And never once in her long life did she ever hurt my feelings or make me feel bad about myself. She was the only one. Maybe that is why freshly baked bread is disproportionately delicious. It is, after all, merely yeast and flour. Hardly a complicated list of ingredients.
My grandmother was a loving old woman. The worst thing I ever heard her say was to call a particularly unpleasant woman an old heifer. There were several women she deemed old heifers. I think an old heifer is a double insult, as a heifer is actually a cow that has not yet given birth. You had to be a horrible person to have my sweet old granny say such a thing about you.
She was a musician, an accomplished pianist. There was a long list of songs she could play from memory. Once in a great while, when the whole family was gathered, she could be persuaded to open the parlor and play for us. The old piano was so terribly out of tune, but it mattered not. The longer she played, the livelier the tunes and the more complicated the music. A brief island of light and ease in all of our lives. She outlived her music and piano playing skill, but I was not around for all those years that she surely filled the air with her joyful music. It was not until her funeral that I learned that one thing she did to earn money as a young woman was to break horses for people. How did I not know this about her? That was important information that someone should have told me! I never had the chance to ask her a thing about it!
She rode a horse to school. She explained to me what those enormous horse blanket pins were for. (You pinned the horse blanket closed over your legs when riding in the cold.) She often told of her father hauling a piano home with a team of big work horses and a wagon. It must have been one of her favorite memories. He father called her Babe. When she cut her long hair off the way the young women were doing, he was shocked. He said, "Babe what have you done to your hair?" She said she never cut her hair again. She was the oldest daughter of ten children. I wonder if he called all of his daughters "Babe", or if that was his name just for her. She clearly loved her father dearly and missed him her entire long life. Just like I have missed her.
Another year passes into the mystery of wherever time goes. We consume our time whether we wish to or not. Such a strange state of affairs for a sentient being to find herself in. People we love so deeply and dearly, like our fathers and our grandmas and our children and grandchildren, all strung along a deep river of time. Some come and go quickly and others stay the distance but ultimately we are all separated. Someone can be gone for a lifetime yet we love and miss them as acutely as when they lived. I am not sad about this, though it seems tragic from our point of view here in our finite lives. Once we are gone, either simply vanished into the ethers or expanded into an infinite knowing, it is all good because: what a gift a life is... how delicious freshly baked bread is...how clearly music is joy made manifest...how dearly we love one another.
As is my custom, I wish:
Peace on Earth and Good Will to (some) men. From the old lady, the supreme beings, and the German Shepherds of Spiritcreek.
