Have You Tried Sitting with Bread All Day?

A short story inspired by Dutch Baby

Hi reader, this week’s newsletter is a bit different. It will be a short story instead of essay. The story is inspired by bread, absolutely top tier beauty. I got to spend time with bread this week and also get to bake the delicious Dutch Baby, which leads to this short story. Hope you enjoy.

If you would like to support my work, please consider being a paid subscriber for $5 a month. I’m exploring some features that is paid subscribers only and I will announce them later this week.

THE STORY

Have you tried sitting with bread all day? Either loaf or loaves. Try it; try it tomorrow. Watch it rise, teasing the sunlight; watch the steam escape; watch it darken, relax, and grow cold.

I’ve tried, as I truly have no choice. I live and work in my aunt’s bakery. She rises at 5 to bake, and I rise a bit after 6 with the smell of bread, tangible, dyeing the ceiling a crisp light golden. Staring at the ceiling for a solid 10 minutes to complete my routine, I wash my face and go downstairs. By this time my aunt is usually at the front, cleaning the countertop and glass display case. The kitchen is empty with a sweet taste. The bread in the oven rises to its perfect shape, having a micro-explosion like a firework, and soon relaxes to the way you will see later behind the glass. We arrange them in the trays, slide them into the display case, stack them up, and slide the rest of the trays onto the racks in the kitchen.

For the rest of the day, my aunt will prepare dough for the next day, shop for ingredients, take naps, go to the pub in the afternoon, stuff her pocket with beans, and sit in the park with pigeons.

And I will watch the bread.

In the store, the shadows and lights melded together, scanning through the bread row by row, slowly throughout the day. They move from the third row on the left side of the display case to the sixth row in the second display case on the right. That is when I close the store.

I find a strange connection, a metaphor between time and bread, as perhaps the perfect form of food should be tied to the seasonal changes, the tide, and the rotation of the sun and moon. I have kids in the store pressing their foreheads on the glass to watch the bread, studying the bread and their golden. A pilgrimage, I shall say, from our not yet fading human instinct in youth. It is pure desire and pure joy.

People who still love food this way in adulthood are blessed. My aunt is one of them. She is an excellent baker but a mediocre cook, yet she dances in the kitchen, spinning while the beef is marinating. She chews carefully, with determination. She never watches TV nor reads while eating, a space of divine solitude is preserved where only she and her food exist, she and her own body. She loves me with food, piling up my plate with more than I can eat.

But not me, I’m not one of them.

Food no longer attracts me. I consider it a sign that I’ve been betrayed by God, by the universe, however and whoever you want to call it. My simplest pleasure has been taken away, and I definitely didn’t give it up willingly (and who would ever want to do that?). There has never been a demon there for me to trade anything for it. I’ve gained nothing that is worth the cost of the pleasure of food.

Maybe someone took it.

Someone must have taken it.

Oh, I see. I know the exact moment.

It was in this exact bakery the first time I saw her. Even when I was a kid and my parents were still with me, I spent the majority of my weekends at my aunt’s bakery. My parents dropped me off in the morning and picked me up 10 hours later after their work. I was too young to help in the store, so all I did was sit behind the counter, read, and people watch. It feels like a fever dream. I was reading a classic romance that I was nowhere near understanding. I was solely fascinated by the well-designed sentences and the blinks and shadows they cast on me. The afternoon sun, harsh, burning the back of my hair. I pressed my cheek on the glass counter, trying to cool it down. Horizontally, I saw an old lady with a scarf wrapped around her head walk in. We live in a remote small town, and it’s not usual for us to have a stranger visit. She was tall and strong, her body blocking the sunlight and casting a shadow on me. I felt a breeze.

My aunt came out of the kitchen hearing the doorbell ring. She was still pretty young and energetic, the apron tied around her tiny waist like a butterfly. She smiled at the old lady and asked if there was anything she could help her with. The lady nodded at me and approached the counter. Her voice was light and low that i can’t tell what she was saying.

“It is sold out earlier, but if you don’t mind waiting, another tray of freshly baked croissants will be out in about 15 minutes.” Her smile was so bright that nobody could say no.

My aunt flied back to the kitchen, and the old lady grabbed a chair near the counter.

“How old are you?” she asked me. Now that she was close, I could hear her clearly. She had deep brown eyes, like a cow watching its calf.

I was 8, so I told her I was 10. I said I had never seen her around town.

“I am a traveler,” she said. “What is a traveler?” I asked.

“We travel to lots of places, and we travel for a living,” I nodded when she said “for a living.”

“Where are you heading?”

“Anywhere,” she said, gently putting her palm on my forehead. It was soft and cold, and I suddenly felt awake.

“Are you a little baker?” she asked and smiled.

“I’m not,” I said, trying to figure out what title I could give myself to impress. “I’m a reader and soon I will be a writer.”

“Uh, dangerous,” she seemed happy about my answer. “Don’t let them mess your head up,” she pointed to the book lying next to me.

---

She came back a few years later. My parents had just gone away the year earlier, and my aunt took me under her wings. It took me a while to recognize her. The town had expanded quite a bit in the past years, and there was no way to remember the faces of all customers anymore.

I realized it was her when she pointed her fingers on the glass to show me the bread she wanted, and looked directly into my eyes. It was the eyes.

“Hi,” I said.

“You are a big girl now,” She didn’t ask if I still remember her.

Am I a big girl? I don’t know. I’ve definitely grown taller, a lot taller, but I’m still skinny like a little boy, with sharp shoulders and dark knees.

She seemed even older. When I was a kid I thought old people more or less looked the same. Their age froze the moment they reached 70, and they stayed the same until they died. But she indeed looked older. Her features deepened, hands spotty. She seemed shorter, or it may be that I had grown taller.

“Traveling to any fun places?”

She shakes her head. “I’m too old to travel anymore.”

I didn’t know what to say next, so I handed her the bread she wanted in a paper bag. She tucked it under her arm.

“You must have plenty of time to watch bread.”

I’was confused. She grabbed a chair. It wasn’t a busy afternoon; there were just me and her in the bakery.

“You see, people don’t see the time until they sit still, give an object 100% of their attention. And at one moment, they will see time flush through their body like standing in a spring creek. They will see time run through the object, push the air moving like wind. When one truly pays attention, time slows and thickens around her and just her. It is a space she can create, true solitude. If one doesn’t seek to create such a space, with a snap of fingers, she will be old like I am.”

“How does it feel to be old?” I brought us some tea and ugly cookies that my aunt refused to sell in the bakery, as an invitation. After my parents went away, I’was desperate to have someone to talk to.

“I’m also learning to understand how it feels like. It’s scary. You have one thing that you are meant to do, a few if you are lucky. For me, it’s traveling. I move around places like my life depends on it. It’s true, when I travel, when my car drives through the land that was not yet touched by me, my soul aches, the good kind. I don’t even need to try to focus. It’s natural for me to see and feel the time while I’m traveling. I lived a long and happy life thanks to it. But now I can’t easily move around anymore.” She paused. “When you find your things, everything else is just fuels that keep you and your things going. Everything else.”

That is the moment my tea started to became tasteless. It was still sweet, still smelled like a spring breeze, still had all the flavor it was supposed to have, but tasteless.

“My body,” she puts her hands on her knees, “my body is fuel but now it traps me. It reminds me, starting gently, but then growing cruel, that it’s time to rest. But rest for what?”

I didn’t answer because I didn’t think the question was for me. She seemed nervous. I added more tea to her cup. She took a long sip while staring the clock hanging at the back of the room.

“Now I can’t easily see the time, but I know it’s there. I fear it might catch on me while I’m not paying attention.”

I can’t help her. I can’t help myself either. Her thing is travel and my thing is trapping my own thoughts with concepts, metaphors, debates, and brain fog of others in a octagonal cage.”. I’m so used to playing with my thoughts and now that is the only thing that matters.

---

My aunt ages gracefully. Her body is still light, dancing and singing around the kitchen. I age alongside her, painfully but fulfilled, as bread is not my choice.

Leave a comment and tell me what you think. Is short story your thing or do you prefer essays?