Inviting

Spring and other things

Dear Bread,

How come you are so inviting? Like spring, pulling sap through the trees, pushing tiny leaves and flowers from the ground. All of it is a surprise, delightful, no matter how much we expect it.

Same as you, bread, billowing into a loaf. The magic is so enticing, as magic usually is. Still, I wonder. What draws us in?

When I was a kid, I had magic books and kits, wore a mustache made from eyebrow pencil and a little black cape. I remember the trick of cutting a hole in a small box, and hiding my finger in cotton. There were dice tricks and card tricks, and I read about Houdini and imagined my body wriggling through his underwater chain trick. I wasn’t a great magician. But I wanted to wow people, like Houdini. Like you, bread!

This week I took my starter from the fridge, where it’s been resting mostly since January. Felix moved to Ithaca to learn how to be an electrician. Without him around, I don’t need to bake or cook very much. (Amazing how long food lasts without a teenage boy!)

I keep my starter in a fancy tuna fish bottle I got empty at the coop – I loved its red lid. After a while of being quiet, gray-black water accumulated on top of the starter, so I poured it into the compost. I scooped off the top of paste, because it had gone gray. I added rye flour and water, ‘stirred’ with a butter knife, as I always do, to clean the sides, and the next morning, the jar was full of bubbles. And so was my heart.

I am impressed that such potency hides, and more impressed that it can surface.

Ever begging for metaphors, I wonder what leavening powers I’m resting? The first part of this year I’ve been like my starter, parked in the fridge, waiting for use. I’ve been reading and making collages, but not writing much.

I’ve been forgetting to write this letter. I used to carry friends in my head all the time, and write them about my days, finishing a letter every few days, and starting a new one. I had planned to take this rhythm with this newsletter, but I find it harder to collect stories for the crowd. It’s like I have to write a speech for an audience I haven’t met. What are my key points? What will resonate?

But mostly, I haven’t written because I’m filling myself with words. I’m reading history books, and about local geology. I read to see how books are put together, to study voice and delivery, analyze structure. I want to know how books invite me inside, so I can invite readers inside my book. Of course, I read for escape, too! Always have, always will. Here are some of the books I’m loving:

Breadsong by Kitty and Al Tait – oh what a luscious tale of baking making meaning! I will probably adore any bakery biography, but this father/daughter work, told in both their voices, really got me.

The cover of Breadsong is a lovely orange, and has a picture of bakers holding bread.

Happily: A Personal History with Fairy Tales by Sabrina Orah Mark – please dive into this mashup of essays & fairytales. Talk about magic.

The book “Happily” has a drawing of a woman wearing a boat on its cover.

The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan – this is haunting and terrific, and also, painfully close to reality, ala Margaret Atwood.

One of Ours by Willa Cather – This novel won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize, for good reason. She really brings you into Nebraska, and World War I, coming close to many characters and giving you a sense of people and place that’s breathtaking. Scenes of farming are lusciously, and plainly, described.

Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional by Isaac Fitzgerald – I loved the pace and tone of this memoir. So honest.

I hope you are all doing well, friends, or at least, good enough. Have a Happy Easter, Passover & spring!

Amy