I made bread yesterday using a bread machine and a packaged mix. I love the smell and taste of warm bread right from the oven – or machine – and, in my ecstasy over the results, I posted a small item on Facebook extolling the virtues of fresh bread. Since I limit access to my Facebook page to my ‘friends’, the post hardly went viral, but insofar as such things go on my Facebook page it got more than a bit of notice.
In one of my own comments to my post, I responded to my son’s inquiry about whether it was possible that he or his brother might have inherited my ‘skills’ at bread making by noting that whatever knowledge I possess was learned from my grandmother. Bunny (as she was known to all and sundry, as opposed to Maude, her given name) was an artist at all sorts of baking. Whatever recipes she used were kept in her head, and I doubt she ever made any of the endless succession of breads, cakes, pies, or rolls exactly the same way twice in a row – at least not consciously. My particular skill as a child was consumption of her products, and she often timed things to come out of the oven as school ended. I never knew what she might have on offer when I got home, just as I never knew quite how she did what she did. In response to a question about how much of something she put into any given recipe, her response was always in the nature of a dollop of something mushy or a smidgen of something more solid. And of course, there was always the pinch she added of this or that.
Bunny knew that success was always about consistency – not the kind of mechanical consistency I engage in while working with my bread machine, but the type of physical consistency that a ball of dough must have if it is to eventually become an edible loaf of bread. While I slavishly follow recipes in a consistent fashion, she always tested the dough with her sense of touch and smell and instinctively did whatever might be needed to make her concoctions turn out to be not simply edible, but beautifully proportioned and wonderfully consumable. Where we intersect – if we intersect at all – is that I learned enough from her to know that if you desire consistent success while using a bread machine you do not simply dump the ingredients in the pan in the desired order and hope for the best; instead, you leave the top of the machine open for the first ten minutes or so and play with the dough using spatulas and additional bits of flour or water until its consistency is just right. And what constitutes ‘just right’ is something that you come to recognize through trial and error. As Bunny used to insist somewhat impatiently whenever she was asked: “You just know when it’s right, now run along!”
Bunny didn’t live with our family on a full-time basis. Early in her marriage she had lived a life of privilege with her banker husband (my grandfather, Frank), but when the Depression brought his bank down and he died too soon thereafter, she was reduced to a state of genteel poverty – the kind of poverty where appearances always matter even in the face of an empty bank account. In short, Bunny was first, foremost, and always a lady, whether or not an impoverished one.
Bunny lived with all of the members of her immediate family in constant rotation, no matter how widely they were scattered at any given time across the landscape of the West. My parents’ generation accepted her presence as a familial obligation, and in that way shared both in her support and in the joys of her baking. She usually stayed with my family in roughly six month increments, and it is true that as much as we always eagerly awaited her arrival when it was our turn to have her in residency, we were equally were glad to see her go when she left for the next stop on her never-ending circling of the west coast.
Bunny was always a joy to be around at first, for she also loved games – especially dice games (Yahtzee being her personal favorite) and was always available to play with us no matter the state of the weather. In fact, she insisted upon it. And therein lay the seeds of our willingness to see her go on her way eventually, for Bunny was the most stubborn, insistent person I have ever met – myself included. Bunny was devoted to having her way; it was her principal survival skill. Imagine being widowed at a young age (she must have been in her forties when it happened) and being destitute. I don’t think it would have occurred to her to have considered remarriage as a solution to her poverty; instead, she soldiered on as best as she could, surviving by means of her indomitable will, a keen sense of humor, a perennial, beatific smile, and a fine appreciation of the irony inherent in her life’s circumstances.
Within my familial generation, stories about Bunny are legion. My sister’s stories are the best, but I personally remember endless games of Yahtzee and piano lessons à la Norman Rockwell whereby I was kept at the keyboard even as I yearned to go outside and play with my friends. But mostly I remember her baking, and while the cakes, pies, and rolls were also wonderful, it is always a loaf of fresh bread that best reminds me of her. There is something in the smell of freshly baked bread that reminds me of the quintessential Bunny; it reminds me of the warm breath of love emanating from a set of shared family values which would not allow her to be left to deal with her poverty on her own. After all, why condemn her to the harsh reality of a bread or soup line when we could enjoy the smell of fresh bread – and games of Yahtzee – in our own home on an almost daily basis whenever she was in residency?
In urban America the idea of family obligations toward the elderly has evolved from the model prevailing during my childhood, but the sort of evolution involved is not necessarily positive. It would likely be true that in today’s urban family culture some or all of Bunny’s immediate family members would pitch in willingly to pay her rent in some sort of residential facility and would feel satisfied with having made the effort, but the thought of her living with anyone and interfering in their lifestyle would not be acceptable. Not everyone living in urban America acts this way – my sister does not, for example – but it is currently the dominant means of dealing with the impoverished old age of a revered family member.
Consider what we miss by acting this way. I remember great personal joy whenever I was able to beat Bunny at Yahtzee – or hearts, or Chinese checkers, or Monopoly, or any other of the endless variety of games we often played – as well as I remember the smell of fresh bread. But as heartwarming as these memories are, I am also aware that whatever ability I have to pursue cherished goals with intensity was learned from her – absorbed by watching her relentless pursuit of an endless round of residences through employment of an inherent sense of self-esteem: a self-esteem arising from the fact that she always knew herself to be a lady even in the teeth of her impoverishment and the endless passing of the buck by her immediate family; a self-esteem evidenced by the hats and furs she always wore with pride when going out, the smile she always wore even when she was tired or depressed, and her insistence by example, word, and deed that she was someone to be reckoned with and not to be ignored despite her circumstances; a self-esteem founded in her notions of personal dignity.
Watching Bunny was a good lesson in the merits of having a positive self-image, even if she carried herself with perhaps a bit too much pride at times. But whatever pride she possessed was well earned, coming as it did from the friction between her belief in herself and her state of poverty. We could – and did – forgive her for her pride whenever it asserted itself, for we knew it was her way of coping with the serendipity of circumstance that made the years of her widowhood such a stark contrast with most of her married life. After all, her right to exhibit the occasional burst of pride was well earned; and it was her pride that allowed her to survive long enough after what was described afterward by her physician as a massive heart attack to take the bread she had been baking out of the oven to cool and go to her room in my cousin’s home to don her best nightgown before lying down to die with her sense of dignity intact.
Whenever Bunny was in residence during my childhood, I found myself watching and learning from her. She taught me by example that if I wanted to escape from the isolated Eastern Washington valley where I was raised, I would have to possess dedication and fortitude in order to overcome the usual obstacles thrown our way in life; she also taught me that what others might think were insurmountable obstacles were nothing more than bigger bumps in the road that had to be surmounted differently than those of lesser stature. In short, she taught, by example, the merits of positive self-esteem and – yes – of just a soupçon (or a pinch, or a smidgen, or a very small dollop) of pride.
Each loaf of bread I make here on the Farm is a personal salute to Bunny’s memory, even if my bread making skills are nothing more than those of a good mechanic as opposed to her true artistry. She visits me here (a place she never knew in life) every time I plug in my bread machine, and serves as my spiritual advisor whenever I have to choose between using just a pinch more flour or a tiny dollop of water to make the loaf-at-hand a success.
