On baking and breaking.

I woke up this morning with a tear-damp pillow; before consciousness was even fully realized I was aching and grieving and hurting and lonely.  This thing isn’t going away anytime soon; I wonder if I made the right choice by staying here, I wonder how many months or years it’ll be before life resembles that which was ripped away so suddenly a few weeks ago, I wonder how we as humanity will manage the toll on our mental health while fighting fiercely to protect the physical health of ourselves and loved ones.  Sometimes it all feels so big and overwhelming and heavy.

And like many across the globe I’ve found solace in baking.  There’s just something about it, isn’t there?  I went to the kitchen and mixed the oil and flour and water and yeast, spread the flour on my counter top and kneaded the dough, set the timer and while it raised I cleaned and organized and washed and felt the solace of just a little bit of control in a world that is in chaos, kneading again, washing the dishes in the sink and drying them while that heavenly smell of freshly baked bread filled my kitchen.

There’s something about bringing the elements together and having it make something beautiful, useful, that makes my kitchen smell amazing and my taste buds happy.  None of the elements on their own are particularly wonderful but when mixed together they transform into something glorious.  I’m sure there’s a profound metaphor in there that probably hundreds of bloggers much more talented than I have already written about; my heart just wants to marvel today at the magic that takes place when all those things are mixed together and you add heat and bam! There’s bread.

There’s something about kneading, about the transfer of energy from my body and heart into this process, the physical pressing and stretching and molding and creating.  Pressing into the dough always reminds me of my grandmother.  She would visit once a year in the summer and we always made bread with her, and I think about the generations of women that baking bread was as much a part of their daily existence as eating.  There’s something about the predictability of mixing these things together, following the recipe and the instructions and knowing that the end result will be successful. There’s very little I know right now about what my future looks like, but I know if I do these things right in a couple of hours I’ll have fresh bread to enjoy. 

And there’s something about dreaming of breaking bread together again in the future. Something I’ll never take for granted in the future; the way living in Africa has made me always appreciate clean tap water in a way others perhaps can’t relate to, being so isolated for so long leads me to anticipate the gathering around a table with bread and wine and laughter and love with such longing I never would have guessed I’d have.  

Yesterday: Sesame Bagels

Today: Hamburger buns

Also today: Banana bread