As I scoop fluffy white flour from the 1950's-era canister on my countertop, the white powder dusting my sleeve cuff, my mind travels to the fields adjacent to the farmhouse where my grandparents lived for more than fifty years before they recently moved to town. That tall, yellow house just off the highway and just north of town was the only consistent house in my semi-nomadic childhood. Some of my earliest memories include sitting on the back stoop in my Osh Kosh overalls while my grandpa brought me a bucket lamb to feed with a baby bottle full of warm milk. As he placed the little lamb in my lap and lowered his body to sit beside me, Grandpa would slip his arm around my shoulders to help guide the bottle and manage the squirrelly lamb until the soporific milk took affect. Somehow even then, I think I knew I was the luckiest girl in the world.
Other times I would pile into the front seat of Grandpa's pick up truck with one or two of my sisters and ride up the hill to the pasture while Grandpa leaned out the window yelling things like, "Whoa, there!" and calling all the cows Bessie.
In the evenings, Grandma would invite us to help prepare the meal. We would do dishes together while she told funny stories of our mom's youth and caught us up on the neighborhood gossip. She would bathe us and read aloud any of the children's books we'd selected from the low shelf in the hallway. And always, from the perimeter of my world there, corn grew up from the rich black soil to tuck me in, holding fast in its rootedness while swishing and swaying with the wind.
"Six," I mumble aloud, enumerating the cups of flour I've piled into the large mixing bowl. I grasp the grainy wooden spoon in my fist and struggle to mix every bit of flour into the dough that slowly increases to more closely resemble the bread it is becoming. I scatter one last scoop of flour on the countertop, patting it flat as the landscape of my Kansas childhood, a patchwork of bowing sunflowers and amber waves of wheat. Glancing across the counter, I half expect to see a child's eyes peering across the surface as I once sat at eye-level across the kitchen table mesmerized by my mom's weathered hands kneading bread dough and making sense out of chaos. When the eight minutes required to knead a batch of sourdough bread stretched long, I flipped over her giant white mixing bowl, imagining its great domed expanse as the unending sky over our prairie plains as miniscule models of ourselves wandered the surface. More than any Sunday School lesson she taught or Bible verse I memorized, my mom's all-powerful guiding hands demonstrated the personality of her beloved God.
Two months ago I went to Palestine for three weeks. The starter I inherited prefers to be used and fed every two weeks to maximize its effectiveness. When I returned to Minneapolis after three weeks' vacation eating unleavened bread I thrust myself into the busyness of everyday life without making time to heap mountains of flour upon itself, knead it into something sensible, or allow dough to rest and rise eight hours before baking. Finally, a couple weeks ago, I pulled my starter from the back of the fridge and attempted to make some bread without high hopes. Indeed, my Italian Herb Bread made with herbs fresh from my school's community garden fell flat. A week later I tried again with the now-recently-fed starter. Again, dense doughy bread resulted. I lugged the starter to work with me, made a batch of pizza crust with a couple students, contemplated the pain of parting with this legacy then decided as much as it saddens me to throw out an integral part of my heritage, an overflowing jar of bubbling goo sitting at the back of my refrigerator serves no purpose but to irritate my roommates. On the way into the house that afternoon, I put the starter in the garbage can by the alley.
Other times I would pile into the front seat of Grandpa's pick up truck with one or two of my sisters and ride up the hill to the pasture while Grandpa leaned out the window yelling things like, "Whoa, there!" and calling all the cows Bessie.
In the evenings, Grandma would invite us to help prepare the meal. We would do dishes together while she told funny stories of our mom's youth and caught us up on the neighborhood gossip. She would bathe us and read aloud any of the children's books we'd selected from the low shelf in the hallway. And always, from the perimeter of my world there, corn grew up from the rich black soil to tuck me in, holding fast in its rootedness while swishing and swaying with the wind.
"Six," I mumble aloud, enumerating the cups of flour I've piled into the large mixing bowl. I grasp the grainy wooden spoon in my fist and struggle to mix every bit of flour into the dough that slowly increases to more closely resemble the bread it is becoming. I scatter one last scoop of flour on the countertop, patting it flat as the landscape of my Kansas childhood, a patchwork of bowing sunflowers and amber waves of wheat. Glancing across the counter, I half expect to see a child's eyes peering across the surface as I once sat at eye-level across the kitchen table mesmerized by my mom's weathered hands kneading bread dough and making sense out of chaos. When the eight minutes required to knead a batch of sourdough bread stretched long, I flipped over her giant white mixing bowl, imagining its great domed expanse as the unending sky over our prairie plains as miniscule models of ourselves wandered the surface. More than any Sunday School lesson she taught or Bible verse I memorized, my mom's all-powerful guiding hands demonstrated the personality of her beloved God.
Two months ago I went to Palestine for three weeks. The starter I inherited prefers to be used and fed every two weeks to maximize its effectiveness. When I returned to Minneapolis after three weeks' vacation eating unleavened bread I thrust myself into the busyness of everyday life without making time to heap mountains of flour upon itself, knead it into something sensible, or allow dough to rest and rise eight hours before baking. Finally, a couple weeks ago, I pulled my starter from the back of the fridge and attempted to make some bread without high hopes. Indeed, my Italian Herb Bread made with herbs fresh from my school's community garden fell flat. A week later I tried again with the now-recently-fed starter. Again, dense doughy bread resulted. I lugged the starter to work with me, made a batch of pizza crust with a couple students, contemplated the pain of parting with this legacy then decided as much as it saddens me to throw out an integral part of my heritage, an overflowing jar of bubbling goo sitting at the back of my refrigerator serves no purpose but to irritate my roommates. On the way into the house that afternoon, I put the starter in the garbage can by the alley.
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