Assignment Two: What is a Thing?

Mary Mailler
Assignment Two - What is a Thing?

 

Flour, water, sugar, salt and yeast; these are the simplest of ingredients that when kneaded together, have formed the staff of life for generations. For the sake of bread, great societies have risen and fallen, served or revolted, destroyed or built kingdoms and monuments. For bread, great populations have survived and prospered, or starved to death and fallen waste to famine.  At its least, it has kept the slave alive to labor and the prisoner reminded of all that he is deprived. At its most, it has graced our tables, sustained our bodies, and rooted itself at the foot of major world religions.

For as long as there has been recorded history, there has always been bread. Someone has planted and harvested the grains, someone has baked it, someone has bought it or sold it, and someone has eaten it or fed it to their families. Amazingly, the essence of what a loaf of bread is has remained unchanged for thousands of years and for hundreds of generations. In comparison, we have very little in our everyday world that we can point to and say it is much the same today as it was a thousand years ago. If ever it were possible to send something back and forth across time, bread would surely be recognized and appreciated at either end of the line.

Although the essence of bread to us today remains unchanged, we can't say that the experience of bread hasn’t changed significantly over the ages. Our ancestors once worried about the cost of procuring seed, the possibility of drought, of flood, pests, locusts, and the wrath of an angry God. Today we have no concern for any of those issues other than whether or not they might raise the cost of our preferred brands.   Our ancestors might have walked in their fields and been satisfied to know that their work, prayers, and good efforts were smiled upon by the heavens, and that a bountiful harvest was assured. Perhaps they fell to their knees and gave thanks, for such a blessing would mean an end to famine in their lands. Today, most of us don't walk in fields of anything.  We walk down brightly lit immaculate aisles, pinching and pulling, checking expiration dates, thumbing through coupons and wondering how many loaves we can cram into our freezers at home.  

What did it mean for our ancestors to plan their meals around a loaf of bread? A reenactment of Jesus' boyhood depicts him as the poor son of an itinerate craftsman living in Nazarath, two thousand years ago. His mother wakes him in the morning and offers him only a piece of flat bread to sustain him through his busy morning. At noon, he and his father return from their work, and Jesus is anxiously awaiting his lunch. This time, there is the same bread, but it is served with crushed olives in oil. He wants two pieces of bread for his lunch, but his mother can't allow it. He is lucky to have one. For Jesus' dinner, there would be more bread served as the solid in broth perhaps, or as the solid for a spread. Jesus probably never knew the experience of bread as an appetizer or as an afterthought to the main dish, like it is usually served today.

But as women and mothers, the keepers of hearth and home, might the experience of serving bread to our families be similar to what it was for Mary so many years ago?  Mothers today are busy outside of their homes, and our worries about feeding our children are not the same as Mary's were.  For us, the worry is time related.  We're not worried about how we will feed our families, we are worried about when we will feed them, instead.  Today, it is enough if the loaf is still warm in the bag when we get home from the grocery store and plunk it down on the table, and so long as children are fed, whether or not we know the farmer, the baker or the candlestick maker, makes very little difference to us at the end of our busy day.

I am a mother who bakes bread for her family, and the process for me serves as a reminder of all the women in my family who came before.  All at once, it is my oldest sister, who has always been beautiful, and the way she presses her lips together when she punches down the loaves in their pans.  It is my mother and the thousands of perfect loaves she’s made versus the hundred or so that I've made, some of which I’ve miserably failed.  But in the quiet moments of an empty home, it is me standing near the Hoosier again, with my grandmother, watching her hands at work in the flour.  She is telling me about how hard is was for her to bury her little baby in the bitter cold of December, so long ago. And now it is the sweetest face of an angel pressed into both of our memories, forever, her's and mine. It is her telling me about the sorrows of motherhood and it is me leaning in close to hear her far-away words.  Finally, it is just me alone, a mother putting her best efforts forward towards her children everyday.