Fresh bread and the joy of existing
I'm living without expectations right now, and it feels good
Hello friends,
It’s been a minute. I know. I’ve tried not to go more than two weeks without sending you a letter, but fatigue has hammered me this month. I’ve gotten a bit of a second wind, though. Reviving my dead sourdough starter forced me into a routine of daily feedings. Each feeding led me closer to fresh bread, and that thought tantalized me. It gave me a spurt of energy, just enough to create a beautiful colony of bacteria.
Making a sourdough starter from scratch reminded me of starting up a new aquarium. A new tank needs an established nitrogen cycle before it’s safe for fish to move in. Every day you add a bit of ammonia, just like every day you add more flour and water to a starter. Ammonia is food for the bacteria needed to sustain life underwater.
There’s no immediate gratification with bread or aquariums, not if you want to do it right. You have to tend to each microbiome for a week or two before even thinking about the next step. You measure out the necessary food for the tiny bacteria, and you wait. For me, that’s part of the satisfaction of making a fresh loaf or watching your fish spawn. The life we see is only part of the story. But for the caretakers, we know how much attention goes into every step. We know that without those tiny bacterial lifeforms, we would have no life at all.
My brain and body are both still sleepy, but I have fresh bread on the counter and words on the page. The tomatoes are beginning to ripen in the garden. Flowers are blooming, and butterflies are emerging. For the first time in a while, I am content. I’m not pushing myself beyond my capabilities to be productive or valuable to society. I’m simply experiencing life.
Life is too myriad to put into one sentence, but it’s more than the despair and fear and anger that seem top of everyone’s mind. Life is an unexpected front of cool air to lower temperatures for a few days. It’s picking your family up from the airport at 1:30 in the morning and not caring, just being happy to see them. It’s texts from your best friends telling you to buy that bathing suit immediately because it looks fantastic on you. It’s learning the names of all the birds living in your backyard. It’s the sight of your Chaco tan returning, that silly Z that reminds you of all your time spent outdoors.
I want to leave you with a haiku I wrote last year. With all the gardening I’ve been doing, it seemed appropriate. I hope it will comfort you the way it comforts me.
dirt under my fingers earth's skin clinging to my own growth is slow but sure
Until (hopefully) next week,
Yardena