|
bread child July 12, 2002, 12:43 a.m. Tassajara dough feels like baby skin to my palms, the pliant heft of a baby's weight in my hands. Oh my shapeless child, what you shall become. A year ago, chopping carrot sticks clumsily in the farmhouse for the campers' lunch, I sliced my fingers three times in one week. I felt such a pride as the days passed and my vegetables became more even. Last night I chopped not just carrots, but celery, potatoes, onions. The minestrone, half new Laurel's, half old edition, and half mine, simmered aromatically in contentment. Butter melts now on the first slice of bread, still hot from the oven. When did I fall in love with bread, I wonder. When did I start liking the way I look in an apron. And the vegetables, in tiny even cubes, are they a side effect of another love, or would I have come to them on my own? Bread-baby, my little flour child. I'll sing you lullabies of honey and jam.
|