TAKING IT FOR GRANTED

Whoa Nellie! What was THAT?
I floated there on my bed, thinking I must be emerging from a dream wherein I was reposing on an inner tube out on Lake Huron. It didn't take long for me to realize it wasn't a dream. I reached for Dave beside me, but he was gone. Our bed continued to shift, the fan above it swayed, and there was an eerie rumbling outside. We are used to some mighty east winds here along the Wasatch Front, but they don’t rattle the bones of the house quite like this. 

Turns out it was an earthquake. 

5.7 Earthquake March 18, 2020

Dave was in the study, working on a court order. My sisters, three of whom live within sneezing distance of us, all texted. All four of my sisters have lived in California, and they knew exactly what was happening while it happened. But, Holy Toledo, this is new to me.

Dave, as presiding judge of the Second District Court, drove to the courthouse. They were already limited by the Covid 19 pandemic, so by 3 pm he was back home, having been ordered to shut down the courthouse when the aftershocks kept coming. 

That map of the earthquake looks eerily similar
to the halo on a coronavirus.

We spent the evening at home, following the parameters set out in response to the Covid 19 pandemic, dragging out the 72-hour kits our church leaders have told us for years we should have prepared for emergencies. Mine still has diapers in it, and medicine that expired in 1987. My propensity for complacency is stunning!

My sister, Libby, is all set with her refurbished 72 hour kit!

But as much as I want to actively do something, all I really feel like doing is...nothing. I want to perpetually sleep, and when I wake, I veg out in front of the TV trying to process everything. That's how my day unfolded, between the aftershocks.

After four straight hours of news coverage, and two serious rockin' and rollin' aftershocks, it suddenly hit me: TURN IT OFF!

And then the quiet rolled in. 

I sit in my comfy leather recliner, my computer in my lap. The earth has quieted. The only sounds I hear are my fingertips clicking away at my keyboard, the steady swing of the pendulum of our grandfather clock, the humming of warm air rising through the heating vents, and a solitary dove calling from the chimney cap atop our fireplace. 

In the stillness, I remember the words of our prophet, reminding us to be still so we can hear Him. The omnipotent HIM. 

In the process I whisper to myself, "do not take so much for granted." 

A peaceful night's sleep in a still, soft bed. 
An easy and comfortable way to get to people we love, often in a matter of minutes. 
I’ve taken for granted the ability to hear the voices of my kids and grandkids through the airwaves. I can check in with them, immediately after an earthquake. In all the eons of time, how often has a mother been able to do that so instantly? 
I turn on the faucet and water still flows. I’m conscious of the fact that our water and gas lines are not broken. 
When the sun sinks below the horizon I touch a small piece of plastic and light appears in my house. 

I take all this for granted.

In this continued stillness I ponder the use of that term, "taken for granted”. We take for granted that certain things will happen; that our cars will work and the roads will be passable, that our utilities will function, and our houses will faithfully shelter us. We assume if we get sick, that doctors can heal us. We presume that bad guys will go to jail and law and order will prevail. I expect the bricks that are laid one on top of the other outside my house will remain intact.

 I take it for granted.

And just when I am about to shame myself for taking these counted and countless blessings for granted, I am reminded that they are, quite literally, granted: Bestowed by the Giver of all good things.

In the process of pondering, I imagine my big old soul just about to leave my heaven home 62 years ago, worried about fitting into such a teeny wrinkled body. I’m worried about leaving the people I know so well, up there in that Heaven place. Just before the jump my big Brother hands me a deed…to my new home: a body, a family, a planet with air to breathe and water to drink and food to sustain. It’s all simply granted to me. Just before I leave, I take it, blowing a kiss back to him as I slip through the veil. Each successive day, since that one when I emerged from my mother's womb, the granting has continued. And, gratefully, I take it.

I take it for granted.

So far today we here in Farmington Utah have survived a worldwide pandemic. We have endured a 5.7 magnitude earthquake and 4.6 aftershocks. We are enduring not going to movies and restaurants and stores and each other's houses. Our kids are trying to stay calm and attentive while  parents are learning to home school them while at the same time trying to work from home and remain sane. We pant our way through this crisis. And still, we eat, we breathe, we are clothed, we communicate, and we are fairly easily entertained right in our own homes. Each of these is no small thing. 
I know from where and from Whom all good things are given. I remind myself to make an effort to be more aware, and therefore more grateful. But I also acknowledge that, with complete and reverential respect, I take these things for granted. I did not earn them. They are granted, freely and lovingly.

My thanks to the beloved Granter of all good things.

THE HOLINESS OF HOME

You wouldn’t know it unless I told you. You would not know that we have an altar in our family room, right in plain view. I’ve written about it before. That altar and I had a nice visit to the Antiques Roadshow back before the millennium turned, where they filmed the appraisal they gave us. It was estimated to be worth roughly fifty times more than I paid for it. But that is not where the value lies.

After they turned off the cameras, there at the Salt Palace where the show was filmed, I commented: “You never know when you’re going to need a good altar.”

A church historian once told me that we would one day have to worship in our own homes, and that sacred ordinances generally done in other holy places would be performed at home. That altar became part of my home preparedness. Besides, it looks perfect with my décor. 

A few years ago I purchased an original bronze sculpture of Jesus Christ from our friend, J. Kirk Richards. It was a gift for Dave’s birthday. It sits atop that altar, in front of the swinging pendulum of a wall clock. (I think it’s symbolic. Time is inconsequential to Him.)

Two days ago, on a Sabbath in March, we gathered around our kitchen table, a little cluster of aging Latter-day Saints. My sisters Sherry and Libby, our friend Leslie, Dave and me. We lifted the heavy bronze Jesus from his altar place and placed on its velvet surface a small pitcher of water and a piece of crusty bread our six-year-old Beth had made with me last week. The small pitcher has the mark of Joe Bennion, the potter, on it. My friend Joe stamps his pieces with a simple symbol which means Holiness to the Lord. I filled the Bennion pitcher with water from the deep seated artesian well I draw from almost weekly near downtown Farmington. Pure, clear water filtered by the earth itself. The bread I placed in a terracotta butter dish we had bought in England when our son John finished his service in the England Bristol Mission. I covered this simple Sacramental feast with the soft white linen napkin given to me by Dave’s Grandma Roy when we left the cottage on Mackinac Island for the last time. Everything about this setting was symbolic.

I sat at the table with my sisters and accompanied on guitar a hymn, Love at Home. Libby offered a family prayer of thanks and pleading. And then the true symbols came to light. 

David knelt at the altar and spoke the words of the Sacramental Prayer, first in Italian, then in English. It has been 44 years since he returned from his mission to Italy. Every Sunday, for the past 44 years, he has voiced in his mind the Sacramental Prayers in Italian as the priests in our wards spoke them in English. When it came time for Dave to speak it aloud, it came out in Italian. He paused and apologized, fanning the pages of the Book of Mormon to find the prayers in English. 

“No,” we pleaded, “Don’t stop.”

Libby reminded all of us that in a reverential way this small act represents our spiritual solidarity with our Italian brothers and sisters who are suffering deeply with the effects of a worldwide Coronavirus pandemic.

It took less than five minutes for us to shift our little altar, break bread and bless it, and partake. Such a little piece of time for such a monumental thing.

But, of course, time is inconsequential to Him.

Jor Bennion, the potter, shows his stamp,
an ancient Hebrew symbol meaning
Holiness Unto the Lord.

Kirk Richards
and his
Cristus

AIR

When a warm wind rolls up from the south it wraps itself around the American flag planted in our front yard. If the hard water of our sprinklers has not completely darkened the spotlight in the flower bed at the bottom of our flagpole, the flag dances in the light. The ribbons of white and red ebb and flow through the darkness. If we are driving home at night, we nearly always comment as we turn into the culdesac: “Oh my, isn’t that just so lovely?” We pause up there, before we roll down into our driveway, and gaze for half a human second. There is just something majestic about that flag. The direction of the stripes was made for active mountain air.

I’ve been pondering the value of air the last few days. It’s warming up now, in this mid-March thaw, and the crocuses have pushed through the winter-worn soil. Today I saw hyacinths pregnant with color, ready to burst. I leave the window next to my side of the bed cracked open all winter long, unless the temperatures dip below zero. It’s been a long held belief that fresh air is medicinal. I’d rather fall off to sleep snuggled under a down comforter with a chlly little nip at my nose than be tucked into a toaster oven with the heating vent blowing in my face. The only thing that makes me occasionally want to close that window is a strong burst of seasonal pollen.

My friend Annick tells me her mom never made up their beds in the morning. Instead, her Swedish mother came in and flung the bedcovers off the sheets, opened the windows and let the linens air out for an hour. She then returned and made up the beds and closed the windows.

I recall the clotheslines of my childhood, some of them strung between two sturdy metal T shaped poles, some of them looped like an inverted umbrella set atop a single pole. Soft cotton towels whipped in the fresh Idaho wind. Sheets and pillows and soft white diapers danced like our front yard flag does now. I don’t recall the basket of clothes brought in from the line smelling that good when we moved to Pittsburgh, but that was in the era of belching steel mills. Our mom learned to use the electric dryer in Pittsburgh. Now we use fabric softening sheets in the dryer to try to imitate what God put naturally in his recipe for air.

We are steadily swirling into the whirlpool of this pandemic of Coronavirus right now in America. My sister Sue texted this afternoon that they have been ordered to shelter in place where she lives in the San Francisco Bay area of California. Shelter at home, except only in emergencies, until April 7^that the earliest. That’s 3 weeks from now. Canada has closed its borders to all except US citizens, who are exempt for the moment. Our daughter Kate lives in upstate New York but is earning her doctorate degree at Brock University in Canada. She crosses the Canadian border every day. They have closed the doors of the university. But school goes on via technology. Kate has to do a presentation tomorrow, using Facetime. Then she will close up her house and hop on a plane in Buffalo because the buzz in the air is that there will be a national travel ban, and New York is just plain too far from her support network. It’s a curious thing to me to think of Kate coming home to us, sitting in a chair up there in the air.

She is coming more for us than for herself. If this goes on and on, then I need to know she has people who love her close by. I’m praying they do not ground airplanes before she gets here.

Restaurants are being ordered closed. Stores are limiting their hours. The stock market is plummeting. All the public schools in Utah have been ordered closed by the Governor. Calvin, Beth and Tess spent the day here with me while Annie and Jordon worked. We are all trying to process what is happening. It is a strange and disturbing time. We do not personally see the sickness yet, but we hear it is coming. The big unknown lays before us like a velvety black curtain. We sit here watching, waiting for it to open and reveal the stage.

Meanwhile, I still open my window and welcome the air. I breathe it deeply, when I think of it, demanding my lungs practice the routine, imagining how this respiratory illness might challenge me if it found me. I open my window and let the fresh pre-spring air come in with its army of angels. I whisper a prayer with the opening, praying for health for me and mine, but praying also for strength to endure and triumph regardless of what the wind blows our way.

PLANTING HOPE

I planted hope today. 

Pale, dry, wrinkled seeds, pushed side by side in long narrow rows of freshly turned dirt. 

I planted hope in spite of the wind that comes from the south, and the darkness it carries toward us. 

I planted hope, trusting that the mysterious and miraculous thing inside those little seeds, that life that seems so dry and dead right now, will spring up through the dark moist dirt in the wooden grow boxes in my yard. 

row on row

dry seeds in March
fresh peas in May

a single seed will not germinate.
seeds need each other.
so do we. 

I do not know what the next few weeks will carry for us. We’re all a little rattled, like the wind chimes outside my back door. Schools are closed, businesses shut down, even church doors are locked against the masses. We will worship here at home tomorrow. We will break bread and bless it and sing together, the little seedlings who belong in this little grow box I call home. We will sing and pray and trust that there is also something inside of us that will grow. 

We're planting hope tomorrow.

SAVED BY THE NAIL

A roofer slips, and as he plunges toward the ledge he calls out:

“Oh God, save me. I swear I’ll dedicate my life to you if you just save me from this fall!”

Miraculously, a nail catches his belt and stops him, rescuing him from certain death.

He wipes his brow and laughs; “Never mind Lord, I got this.”

We are in the early stages of the Covid 19 crisis here in America. Everyone everywhere is a-buzz. This is the adrenalin-driven place where we are all united by a massive common denominator: our humanness. But no one I know personally is sick.  Our imaginations, on the other hand, are alive and well. We are learning how to step back, literally: from each other, from our daily patterns, from the innocence that was an unknown gift yesterday. Ignorance was bliss. Today we are all conscious of our vulnerability as living creatures.

I observed how many humans handle personal crises when I served as a teacher in the Davis County Jail. I was called as a spiritual leader to serve female inmates. Every Sunday and Wednesday, for three years, I would pass through thick metal doors in a series of security points, armed with what little bit I thought I knew of God. Carrying nothing but scriptures in my hands, and a prayer in my heart, I passed through those emotionally sterile corridors, past the stainless-steel kitchen doors and through the unforgettably pungent smell of too many sweaty clothes washed in each batch; the jail laundry. I swear, if being confined were not enough to keep me from a life of crime, wearing that community clothing would.

When women are taken from their children, and their homes, and their drugs of choice… when they are shackled and stripped of jewelry and curlers and makeup, they get pretty humble. As soon as they are clean and sober, for some of them, the first place they turn is to the Lord. It’s a pretty tender time, for even the toughest gals. I told my husband Dave, who is a state court judge, that he and the other judges are prayed over almost daily by people they don’t even know. “Lord, please bless the judge to be fair and merciful.” We heard it every single time one of them prayed before sentencing.

It’s a rare inmate who cleans herself up, figures out who she is and finds her way out for good. Most of us humans end up like that roofer saved by the nail. We beg for God’s help, then when things get comfortable again we return to familiar patterns. Before we know it, some volunteer spiritual guide ends up standing in the doorway of the library at the jail welcoming us back to Relief Society six months after we left. Some women, however, figure out how to stay out.  It’s rare, but it happens. My friends Jan and Pati -  they figured it out. They are free in every sense of the word,  and they know from whom their strength comes. I’m not saying they have become religious fanatics. I’m saying they know what parts of themselves are big and what parts are small and who, in the end, has the power.

So, regarding our current state of international crisis, I’m wondering what we will be looking back on six months from now. Will we be weeping at the suffering of people we love? Will the destroying angel pass us by? Will our 401K’s be fractional? Will we still have jobs? For sure there will be damage, some of it irreparable. And for sure there will be growth. We will not know until it is over how each of us will internalize this opportunity. 
Tonight, I pause and have a little talk with myself, walking into this unknown with an awareness of how I want to be able to look back on it. The awareness is a worthy exercise.

My daughter-in-love Ashley sent the following quote to our family today:

‘You have been offered the gift of crisis’ As Kathleen Norris reminds us, the Greek root of the word crisis is ‘to sift,‘ as in to shake out the excesses and leave only what’s important. That’s what crises do. They shake things up until we are forced to hold on to only what matters most. The rest falls away.”          Glennon Doyle

No doubt there will be marvelous stories of courage and kindness coming from this crisis. And there will be sorrowful tales to tell, as well. But I hope, when it’s behind us, we will have the wisdom to know to whom we should offer thanks when we find ourselves saved by the nail.

MY TESS

I have to sneak in while she's napping to steal "snuzzle"
and put it through a wash cycle.

What do you do when you are two years old and your Gummy has a deadline: seven songs before a Wednesday recording session?

First, you repeatedly hand your GumGum one pistachio at a time. One. At. A. Time. Batting your big brown eyes as you pull her fingers off the neck of the guitar. (Tessa loves ‘stachio’s. She’s TWO years old. Shouldn’t she just want applesauce or something?)

Next, you repeatedly remind Gummy that you want to watch Mickey. Repeatedly.

“No Tess, Mickey is not on right now. He’s having a nap. Don’t you think you should take a nap, too?”

I remind my Tess that I can make her a bottle of nice warm milk. She only gets to have a bottle and sleep in a crib at Gummy’s house. At home, she is being forced to grow up! 

She’s thinks about it for a minute, but decides instead to hand me another pistachio.

Meanwhile I am still stuck on the first line of verse two in the song I am supposed to be writing.

I plunk away, repeating the same lines over and over and over, the way I do when I’m trying to create. 

I realize, at some point, that I have been able to focus for at least three minutes and I’m wondering where Tess is. I’m thinking she must have found the bin of Little Ponies in the locker room drawer. I settle into the couch, shifting the ukulele and banjo so I can sit back with my guitar.

I have my eyes closed, looking behind my eyelids for some sort of mystical words to appear, when I feel the tickle of something like a feather against my arm.

 I open my eyes to this:

It's tough for a writer to get much done when Tess is here.

This vintage Native American head dress sits on the head of a wooden St Francis statue near our back entry. I can’t remember why it ended up there. Things are generally strange around here. That carved replica of St Francis, with a sweet little bird in his hand, is just about as tall as Tess.

St. Francis prepares for the war path.

I lift myself off the couch and grab my phone/computer/recording device/camera and preserve this moment. I give in and we decide to read a miniature copy of The Flopsy Bunnies from the teeny tiny Peter Rabbit book set by my chair.

The elusive songs did not come to me while tending Tess. I should not have expected them to come. They can come at midnight, when Tessy is home in her little bed with her green blankie and her snuzzle. My Tess will only be two for a breath. By the time I exhale she will be skipping off to school in the shoes she tied herself. And then we will blink and we will be sending her off to high school and BAM, she’s no longer at all interested in warm milk or her snuzzle blankie or Mickey Mouse.

She may, however, still be a fan of pistachios.

I’ll have to remember that. I will remember to keep a stash of them forever and ever and ever, with the whisper of hope that it may bring her around now and then.

When you're two, everything gets a "Ta Da!"

THE GREAT TOILET PAPER RUSH OF 2020

Remember that time in the year 2020 when the talk of the town was toilet paper? We were facing a worldwide pandemic, the coronavirus Covid 19. I don’t think the symptoms even involve the digestive tract in particular. But for some reason the big panic among the citizens of the civilized world was stockpiling toilet paper in case one had to be quarantined for the two-week duration of contagion. (That’s me, thinking ahead. There’s nary a roll of toilet paper to be found in any store… anywhere!)

Stepping back to semi-analyze it from my lazy boy chair, I think it rather curious that toilet paper has become the pinpoint of our panic. I guess we humans need something to focus on so we don’t swirl in fear, and if we can comfort ourselves by stacking up rolls of toilet paper in our bathrooms, well then, I guess this is a pretty easy fix. For two and a half minutes we can feel like we are in control.

No worries here. My mom taught me to always have plenty of TP on hand. That, and soap. And to play it safe, I also have an abundant supply of powdered cocoa. I figure if things get bad I can barter that chocolate for just about anything. 

Creative ways to use our gifts
 in service to each other

If someone I love ends up quarantined, and I’m not, you can be sure I’m cooking up some grub and leaving it, with an extra pack of toilet paper, on their porch. They can open the door after I leave.

Tonight, Dave and I drove to Herriman to attend Anna’s Jr High Choir concert. In the one hour it took to drive home we listened on the radio as President Trump ordered our borders closed to anyone who has been in Europe. The NBA suspended all games, our church cancelled the public attendance of members in our General Conference next month, and Utah State University cancelled all non-classroom events. All this in one drive home. David is supposed to be in St George for annual ABA meetings and a judicial conference, but at the last minute last night they cancelled that gathering, so he's working from home the next few days. It’s getting real.

I’m pondering for myself how I fit, personally, in this swirl of panic. My experience with Guillaine Barre Syndrome has left me immuno-compromised. I am deathly allergic to poly-glycols, one of the main ingredients in hand sanitizers. Plus, I’m no spring chicken. I probably should be worried. Still, while I am cautious, and I sing a full verse and chorus of I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy when I wash my hands, I feel a calmness that surprises me. 

I certainly don’t want myself or anyone I love, which is pretty much everyone, to suffer unnecessarily. But my mind keeps trying to wrap itself around how crazy everyone is behaving over our physical condition, actually over our potential physical condition, when we are, in so many more eternal and consequential ways, spiritually and emotionally diseased. Why aren’t we up in arms about that?

Why are we not obsessed with rescuing young girls from the speeding traffic of child sex trade? Is my neighbor who is struggling to keep her head above water, emotionally, any less worthy of my compassion than the one who has a cough and a fever? Can I offer my intellectual and emotional energy to my own understanding of how my church might still be a growing place for me even though I don’t agree with every aspect of the behavior of some of its leaders? Maybe getting in my car and searching from store to store for toilet paper is a useful diversion from these weighty matters. We can plunk our money down and feel like we have bought our safety. 

I don’t know. But what I am thinking is that I personally need to be more focused on my spiritual well-being than I am on my physical well-being. Not that I should be flippant about real physical threats. I’m pretty sure my spirit’s going to be with me a lot longer than my body. So, while I respect the fact that I want my body to be clean and comfortable and healthy, I want to remind myself, and those I love, that the condition of my spirit takes priority. The enemy might be easier to fight if we could put a label on it, like we do Covid 19. We can be really diligent in using all the tools to fight that. But the thing that could really take me down, in the long run, is less easy to describe, and more insidious.

Lord, give me the eyes to see clearly who my enemies really are, and the wisdom, the strength and the tools to either steer clear or fight them off.

THE SOUND OF SUNDAY DINNER

Smart phones are only smart if the people using them are not stupid.

For good or for bad, my life is changed by the palm sized computer I carry around everywhere I go. I totally get the potential, and the reality, of the bad. But I am blessed by the good it has brought to my daily life. I have preserved photographic images of people I adore, especially the ones in my bloodline. I feel connected with people who are far away, even if they only live across town, through the weaving threads of social media. I don’t have to personally memorize every phone number I need, and I no longer have a paper calendar on my wall with illegible scribbles covering every day. My phone sends out a little whistle to remind me ahead of time when I have an appointment. That’s super awesome. And I don’t have to pull over and look at an outdated paper map when I’m trying to find an address. For me, personally, my smart phone is worth every penny.

For years, I had to drag out a portable tape recorder when I was in songwriting mode. Because I don’t read music, and therefore don’t write it down, a recording device is indispensable as a songwriting tool. Because I am old, I have piles and piles of old cassette tapes, evidence of years and years of songwriting. First I used old fashioned cassettes. Then I went to the mini-tapes, then digital media on a small recording device. And now, I just press a button on my smart phone and I’m instantly in record mode. If I die, I bequeath to my posterity who is prone to songwriting, or my songwriting friends, the innumerable half written songs stored on my iPhone.

As I was working on a tune for a first-grade class I’m working with this year, I scanned the most recent recordings in my voice memos. There are the “brain” songs my first-grade teacher friend Becca and I are working on. There’s a ukulele version of I Am a Utah Man young Mary Snow requested to learn for a school play. And there are various versions of Clytie Adams recital songs I’ve written for this year’s dance recital. There’s the sound of my grand-daughter Ruby playing ukulele and singing the song she wrote for Reflections, in various phases of refinement as I taught her the tools of song writing. There’s a secret recording of my other grandkids; Anna singing in Sacrament Meeting last Sunday with Timothy accompanying her. So lovely, just so lovely. There is lots of music in my world, and lots of snips of it on my phone.

Down there in early January 2020, there’s a random recording with the title “The Sound of Sunday Dinner”. It sits on my smart phone just above my neice Brooklyn's mission farewell talk. I clicked the black arrow and listened from my spot on the family room couch. Through the mini speaker came a cacophony of sound, and an instant urge to sit back, to close my eyes and relive the goings-on of our house on a typical Sabbath evening. 

Against the aromatic backdrop of roasted chicken and freshly baked bread, I can see a swirl of people, each of them connected by that love-thread that keeps getting tangled up in this place. I hear the voices of my sisters, and my children, every one in their own unique keys and time signatures. My husband’s hands clanging dishes into the dishwasher. The drone of water pouring dutifully from the kitchen faucet. The throbbing patter of little feet on hardwood floors, and youthful laughter as Joe, Calvin and Walter chase each other through the circle of our living space. John must have picked up a guitar. I can hear notes starting to rise through the voices; clear, melodic tones from thin steel strings. Anna and Ruby are passionately discussing something or other, their adolescent voices sit half an octave above the old folks, and Parker lets out a long vibrato-driven note that pierces through all conversation until Sophie breaks out in laughter. With each word, and each musical voice, I attach the face of someone I love, and someone who loves me back. The Good Lord assembled this gathering of musicians. I thank Him for that. A couple dozen musical hacks, all untrained in the real art of life. We plunk away though, willing to play along even when we’re not quite sure what we are doing. These people I love play with and against each other, on the same stage. Even if they are all playing different songs, in different modes, the orchestration of their voices is so divine, so unmatchable, that it cannot be written down or replicated. Not by humans at least. It can however, be played back, over and over, on this little hand held device of mine.

Sunday dinner at our house - January, 2020. It’s just a bunch of noise to the untrained listener. 

But to me, it is music to my ears.

CRUSTY ARTISAN BREAD with MY BETH

Bethy's Bread

Costco used to sell a wonderful artisan bread that everyone in our family loved. I bought it by the case of 24, par-baked and frozen. We kept our garage freezer filled with it. I'd rush home from the store, tear open the cardboard case and tuck two loaves at a time  into plastic bags. I stacked them in the freezer like icy library books. All we had to do for hot bread at Sunday dinner was finish baking the frozen loaves at 385 degrees for 18 minutes. We called it bunny bread because when it was cut each piece formed the outline of a rabbit.

Then Costco quit selling it.

Dang.

My friend Cherie Call started posting on Instagram images of bread she had made; lovely crusty artisan bread with soft white airy centers. She claimed it was ridiculously easy. In spite of being smack in the middle of raising children and sustaining a successful musical career, Cherie said she made it regularly. I asked her if she was being honest about the ease of it, and she swore it to be truth. Cherie and I are kindred hearts in many ways; we treasure time with our kids, we bottle our own fruit during canning season, we write songs and sing them for people and in our own earthy way we are both trying to be like Jesus. I trust Cherie. 

So I set about looking for enameled cast iron casserole pots, intending to give it a go. I bought three of them. They sat in my cupboard for such a long time, because while the recipe for that bread was pretty simple, the timing seemed like it could be a challenge. 

The recipe had four simple ingredients:

Flour - Salt - Yeast - Water 

Mix them all together. Let it rise. Shape it. Let it rise again. Bake.

The thing that kept me from making it was that one ingredient they don’t list in the supplies:

Time

So I put it off… and put it off… and put it off, until one wintry day I thought I’d put other stuff off and focus on this. What I found out, after doing this over and over, is that the time is not exact, and it doesn’t have to be. If I have 8 hours for a good rise, then that’s awesome. But if I set that dough in a good thick ceramic bowl, and if I set it on that spot on my bedroom floor where the sun comes through the windows and the heating vent is close by, the rise will be dependably good in 3 to 4 hours.This is contrary to other stuff I've read, but it's true for me. 

The first time I made this was a Monday. I am blessed beyond all blessings to tend my grandkids on Mondays, so my baker Beth helped me before she went off to afternoon kindergarten. We watched some YouTube tutorials, looked at various recipes, reviewed what Cherie had sent by way of instruction, and we gave it a go. That night we had a couple dandy loaves of crusty bread. What a shock!

Truth is, I’m a fairly good cooker. I have a lot of experience standing at my stove top preparing meals. And I make some dependably delicious baked treats. But bread, and rolls? At that, I am a bonafide failure. I have stopped myself short of allowing "bread baking shame" to infuse into my psyche, because I am working on that shame thing. But I have yet to consistently pull nice fluffy rolls from my oven, or beautiful irresistible swirls of cinnamon rolls. So when this bread came out not only looking good, but feeling good, and tasting yummy … well, shock is the appropriate word.

Today is Monday again, and I had a nice plump chicken all cleaned and ready for roasting. Tessa and Beth were here with me today. Before I took her to kindergarten, Beth made, by herself (with just a little verbal guidance) dough for three loaves of crusty bread. We  baked it after school, when we put that chicken in the other oven. It had a seven hour rise.

I used the camera in my phone to preserve this image of little Beth working the dough, incorporating the dry and the wet. I watched her little hands repeat what I taught her:

"Pull it up - Push it down - Turn it around

 Pull it up - Push it down - Turn it around"

She repeated it in her sweet little girl voice as she kneaded the dough. She kneaded just enough to evenly incorporate the dry with the wet, but she did not overwork it, the way you might a regular loaf of bread. Kneading is a therapeutic art, and every human should know it. I thought of telling Beth that making bread is a microcosm of life, that most of what we do it just repeat-repeat-repeat. But I held my tongue, mostly because the Spirit in me told me she would figure that out for herself. 

Someday, my Bethy Boo, when you are tired of doing your homework, or you are sick of that one project at work, or you feel like the laundry pile will never ever ever end, or you will not be able to handle another chemo treatment... will you remember your old Gummy standing next to you showing you that the softest, crustiest, warmest, tastiest most nourishing things in life require a bit of repeat-repeat-repeat?

Beth and I are still in the process of adjusting this recipe.
Repeat - Refine - Repeat

Crusty Artisan Bread

3 loaves – 3 enamel pots

13 C flour

3 T dry yeast

2 T salt

6 c warm water

Mix all ingredients well in a large bowl.

Transfer the dough to a large ceramic bowl to rise. I have lately been dividing the dough into three pieces and letting each rise in their own ceramic bowl. Cover with a tea towel and let rise till roughly double. Time will vary, but you’ll need at least a few hours. I’ve done it in as few as three hours and as many as 12. Both turned out fine.

Place enamel pots in oven and turn it on to 425 degrees. Be sure lids are on the pots. Lids are essential.

While the pots are heating up, punch down dough and shape into balls. Place each loaf on a piece of parchment paper which has been sprinkled with roughly two tablespoons of corn meal. (I’ve used flour too, but corn meal is better) Basically you want a dry barrier between the paper and the dough. 

Cover the loaves and let rise for about 45 minutes while the pots heat up.

Slice the top of your dough loaves with a serrated knife. The loaf will spread apart where you cut it, and will look lovely when you bake it.

Take pots out of the oven (careful not to burn yourself). Remove the lids. Lift each loaf by the corners of the parchment paper and set in the pans, parchment and all. Replace the lid and put back in the hot over. The lid makes it steam inside, which forms the crispy crust. 

Bake with lid on at 425 degrees for 30 minutes.

Remove lids and bake an additional 15 minutes.

Remove from oven, lift bread out with parchment paper and cool on racks.

Our first try was ONE BIG LOAF.

Here are the ingredients:

6 ½  c flour

2 t.  salt

1 ½  T. yeast

3 c warm water