I loved my grandmother. We used to make the drive to her house often and stay, usually for a long weekend. She was an old Czechoslovakian woman stooped over with age and hard work. She seemed eternally happy to me though I am not sure everyone saw her that way. When we arrived she always had lunch ready. Borsht, ham sandwiches on homemade bread, and I seem to remember grape juice but that could be something else…it was a very long time ago. There was always the smell of fresh bread and a country ham in the refrigerator. Grandma was perpetually baking, mostly for the church, and I remember clothespin cookies, kolache filled with nut paste or poppy seed paste. She was a pastry artist as far as a six-year-old boy was concerned. Years later, when I was old enough to drive I would make the four hour drive to Youngstown by myself to see grandma. I would arrive late in the afternoon and she would ask what I wanted to do and I would always say I needed a nap. I would lie on the living room carpet in the sun from the floor length picture window or, sometimes, I would lie in the cool grass in the shade of a locust tree just in front of her house. Sometimes she would take one herself then we would have lunch or coffee and I would go to work doing whatever chores she could no longer perform. Grooming her rose gardens or making repairs around the house. I seem to remember hanging a screen door. But, most of all, I remember the smell of fresh bread.

I was maybe seventeen when I found myself asking my mother a strange question. We were in my mother’s kitchen, a kitchen that had provided for eight hungry children and a husband with a ravenous appetite. My mother spent a great deal of time in the kitchen. I loved that kitchen and still do. The kitchen is warm and full of good smells. I learned to cook in that kitchen. From my father, I learned things like how to make a peanut butter milkshake or a western omelet. The key ingredient of the western omelet I was told involved a lot of chopped peppers sautéed in, of course, bacon grease. My father loved leftover grease. Bread was fried in it, eggs were fried in it. It’s no small wonder he needed a bypass in later years. From my mother I learned more subtle things like what goes in a good pancake mix, how to make pizza, how a pressure cooker works and that vegetables and beans are just as good, if not better, before they are cooked. So, my mother and I are standing in the kitchen, me with my shoulder length, unkempt teenager hair and her finishing up the dishes if I recall correctly. I asked an honest question.

“How come you don’t make bread like grandma does?” not having any idea what went into the ordeal.

“Why don’t you make bread like grandma does!” she shot back.

I was caught short. I didn’t know what was entailed. I did know that I wanted to know so I apologized and persisted. I told her that didn’t mean anything by it, was just a question and I would be happy to make the bread if she could just show me how. I think she was also caught short, but she did show me.

I was seventeen then. I understood quickly why, on top of everything else, she was not about to add bread to her schedule. I enjoyed making the bread and I still do. Today I am almost fifty years old and there are three loaves cooling on the counter as I write this. Whenever I go home to see her I make a point to make a few loaves for her to enjoy after I leave. When I can’t make time to travel home for a while I sometimes box up a few loaves with a good book and send it home. Baking bread is possibly my favorite thing. My heart goes into it, maybe some soul if there is such a thing. I sweat over it, care for it, and tilt the hot loaves out and onto the cooling rack as if they were just birthed. The process is biological, chemical, and magical. Raw ingredients warmed, whisked, stirred, and kneaded, allowed to rise then baked into a wholly different thing. When sliced and toasted I am reminded that I am never far from home…or grandma’s house.

If you find that your life is frantic. If you think that your life is packed with activity and over-scheduled. If you think you don’t have time to do something that takes so much time and attention then I think that you must take some time and learn how to make bread. Bread will feed you and fill you. It will make the best sandwiches you have ever had. It will be fantastic while still warm with a pad of butter melting on it but, more than that, the act will give you time to reflect. Time to decompress. Use it as an excuse to sit around and read a book, listen to some music perhaps, or take a nap or do all of those things. The bread is a reminder that every minute does not need to be filled with some kind of activity to be considered time well spent. When you spend a quiet Sunday afternoon letting the dough rise and begin to fill the house with its yeasty smell you will understand what it means to put all those ingredients together and fashion it into something wholesome. When you have done it well you will find that not only have the ingredients transformed but have also transformed you…into a wholly different thing.