Kneading What We Have Been Given

Dear Haley-Hero,

You've had those very bad no good days before. I know you have because we've talked about them. Sometimes we cross paths on those days, a jotted text to ask for prayer, a complaint, a tearful confession. Sometimes they just happen and they're so cram packed full of stuff or disappointments or feelings of failure, though, and it isn't until the next day that we catch up and remind one another that sometimes life doesn't go like we planned or wanted or really tried hard to make it go like.

I was thinking about Pinterest and Instagram the other day—you and I talk about this sometimes. Real life vs Edited life. I think it's good to see the beauty around us, and do our best to make what we have in front of us beautiful, but it's also good to remind people that you've worked hard to both see it that way and make it that way. Beauty doesn't just happen, regardless of what every new mother and new lover will tell you. We do have to work to see the beauty in an ordinary day, but also a very bad no good day.

I guess you've picked up by now that it hasn't been a day I want to write about necessarily. And yet, it's Tuesday, and we are trying our level best to get on schedule now that we're in our second week of Tables and Miles (I write on Tuesdays and you on Thursdays). I hope the internet has as much grace for us as we have for one another, though. In fact, that's not a bad idea. Having grace for people a continent away, I mean. You and I talked yesterday about how social media has turned into a nasty monster in the past year, not at all like the place it was when we were introduced by a shared editor so many years ago (Thanks, Seth!).

This year (all almost two weeks of it) has got me all sorts of nostalgic for simpler times when people went to their mothers or grandmothers for advice about parenting or marriage and not the internet. Even if the advice was terrible, and they knew it would be, they still asked. We both have good moms, flawed, but good and gracious.

I think I am the age my mom was when I started to realize she was a person, not just a mom. That she had insecurities and awarenesses of how flawed she was and how badly she wanted to do things right. I wounded her so badly so many times as a child and I wish the awareness of her personhood had come sooner. I especially see her when I look at my hands (and my thighs, but who wants to talk about that...). I have my mother's hands. I think about this today, using her recipe for bread, the one we all grew up on. I have so many memories of her kneading this dough with her hands, my hands, our hands. I wish I had a daughter looking at my hands and realizing I'm a person too this year. I can't get too caught up in that wishing though, because the grass isn't greener on any side except where it's watered and I want to water the blooms God has given me for today. It's hard though, isn't it, Haley-Hero? It's hard to look at this portion of today, these hands, this day, this dough, this life, and breathe it all in in gratefulness. It's hard, isn't it?

I am struggling today to make this portion matter, to feel like it is enough, but it is Tuesday and I need to write this and you aren't surprised by my struggles, ever. Thank you for that.

Mama's Bread

2 cups of flour (I use King Arthur's "white" whole wheat)

3 cups hot, but not too hot (don't want to kill your yeast) water

A couple tablespoons of honey (I use local)

A packet of yeast

Mix and let sit a minute or two. Then add:

A couple tablespoons of salt

1/4 cup of avocado oil

A few more cups of flour (I usually do about 3-4)

Mix well, it will be springy to touch (not bouncy springy, just come back to me springy)

Let rise for a few hours (you're just going to have a get a feel for this in your house, at your elevation). Shape into two long loaves across a cookie sheet or two bread pan loaves. And then bake at 425-50 (depending on your elevation and oven) for about 25-30 minutes, until you can knock on the top and it sounds good and done. Let sit for an hour or so. These loaves last us a week. They're nice and hardy, but not like eating rocks.

I'd really like to learn how to make sprouted bread from scratch. Maybe I'll do that if our lives ever get settled down and I'm not working so many hours on paying jobs...

I love you, HH. Thank you for being my bread,

Lo