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April 29, 2005
Many generations in the making
Because of what our ancestors endured, now we can wait for our
bread to rise and enjoy it at our leisure.
SHULAMIT KLINGER
When you are baking, there is no argument with time. The bread
takes such and such a time to make and that's all there is to it.
No messing about. Go for a walk. Go out and pick blackberries. Do
the hula. But don't sit at home waiting for it to rise, checking
on it every two minutes. There's no point.
I am imagining what my favorite aunt would have said to me, if she
were still alive, to give me advice about an old and nagging problem
for impatient cooks. She would be right about the bread, but she
would have missed one thing. She could not have told me that bread
doesn't just take a few hours to rise. Sometimes it can be generations
in the making.
My aunt made an impression on me only after her death. We had never
met but I have her picture. Her hair is lacquered and shiny, her
lipstick perfect and black-looking, in a photograph she sat for
in Egypt, in 1947. She looks older than I would have at that age.
More graceful. More like a film star or a news anchor than any 19-year-old
would now; more elegant than me, that's for sure. Her sons tell
me that I look like her, but I cannot identify with the goddess
in the picture, who gave me advice about boys, bought me a gigantic
sweater and sent us a whole fish by mail. I did not know that if
you lived in the Pacific Northwest, this was perfectly normal. I
lived in England and thought it cheerfully bizarre.
She was a sensible woman. She would have told me not to argue with
yeast. Not to fight the slow, molecular fixings of the bread dough,
but to wait as if waiting on the turning of the cosmos, the movements
of the planets, over which we have no control and at which we can
only gaze, up, up into the blackness, wondering.
I gaze into my bread dough thinking of my aunt, wondering how it
was that we never managed to make bread together. I hang onto the
sides of the bowl, the glass warm from the hot water it's been standing
in, breathing in that intoxicating, yeasty smell. I hang on as if,
by grasping this bowl, I can reach back into the generations and
pull her out, prevent her from leaving the earth and find a way
to tell me how to stop this nagging of the generations that grabs
my sleeve and tries to drag me backwards to Alexandria, to Vienna,
to Czernowitz, to places with names and nationalities that change
with each invasion, each occupation, each pin on a military strategist's
map. To the places I didn't have to see but they did; where my grandmother
walked barefoot in the snow to find potatoes to feed her family.
I think back to the other stories I know about bread. How in ancient
times they made their escape from Egypt before the bread had risen.
How we commemorate this by eating flat bread now. How bread fell
from the sky when they were in need. How it fed the wanderers looking
for a homeland in the desert.
I think about how my grandmother banged on the huge doors of the
Jesuit school in Alexandria, demanding that she be allowed to hand-deliver
French bread sandwiches to her young sons. None of the other mothers
did this, my uncle tells me, during our first meeting in 25 years.
Nobody else would dare, but the monks weren't sure what to make
of this tiny, formidable woman, speaking at least five languages
and looking as determined as she did. She told them what she wanted
and her sons ate freshly baked French bread every day. That's just
how it was.
As I stand, kneading the dough on the kitchen counter, I think about
where I am in my life and where I am in the life of my family. I
am part of the first generation that has grown up in peace time,
under no threat of race-based violence. I am making my bread slowly,
calmly and in my own home. We can eat this bread piping hot, straight
from the oven or I can freeze it for later. I can share it with
friends, serve it with butter, marinated vegetables or a big hunk
of feta. I don't need to worry if there'll be enough for tomorrow
because I can always make more. I don't need to bury it to keep
it safe from thieves, like the child survivors my father knew. It's
for pleasure, because I choose not to buy it. I don't make it to
ward off starvation. It's my choice, a domestic ritual, a meditation,
not a necessity in a world governed by fear.
Now that my bread has had its 23 minutes in the oven, it's ready
to come out. I pull on the pan and see my 12, crunchy brown rolls
crowding against each other in the pan. There's more than I can
eat now, so perhaps I should store some? Or should I share it?
This bread has been generations in the making. It may have gone
into the oven 23 minutes ago, but the idea of it started long before.
Generations and centuries before.
Who should I share this bread with now? Who needs it more than I
do, now that we are safe and unafraid? Our suitcases are stored
and gather dust. We do not regard our possessions as obstacles to
immediate travel and our bank balances are safe from plunder. Other
generations have brought us to this place, but now it is time to
share the bread we have made, in our freedom.
Shulamit Klinger is a Vancouver freelance writer.
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