Breaking Bread

Hey, y'all. Here's my contribution on both bread and kinship. That's kinda cheating, I realize, but as I contemplated the two topics, I knew I couldn't separate them. Aixois is my family and we are that because we have shared so much over "bread."

Also, I realize the criticism of "not enough" will come here. This is something I would like to play with and expand at some point. That's just an FYI.

Enjoy!

LLM

***

“It was never more’n just a little knockabout place. . . . It’s funny how a little place like this brought so many people together.” This is how Mrs. Threadgood describes the Whistle Stop Café to Evelyn Couch in Fried Green Tomatoes.

“A little knockabout place”—I’ve known a few of those. The most significant of them is a little French restaurant and coffee bar called Aixois that’s not a hundred paces from the home where we moved when I was a junior in high school.

At that time my grandparents moved out to Washington state, and my mom and her partner bought their house. Mom and I had been in our little house on Madison for thirteen years. For me, the move meant leaving the house that symbolized our survival after dad’s death; it meant I could no longer hide from my friends that my mother was in a relationship with a woman, something I had not shared with anyone since I’d been teased about it in grade school; it meant saying goodbye to the grandparents who had been such a big part of my growing up; it meant moving out of the parish that had been my home. I recognized it as a good thing for mom and Ruth, but I did not see it as such a good thing for me.

About three months after we moved into the house Aixois opened. Ruth started working there as the coffee bar manager, and the place became a regular hangout. On Saturday mornings I would wake early, grab a book, and head across the street to claim one of the round wooden tables by a window. With a cup of tea and a chocolate croissant I would immerse myself in whatever I was reading at the time—Joan Chittister, Lord of the Rings, schoolwork, Toni Morrison.

Coffee shop regulars are a particular breed. The baristas know their drinks of choice. They have particular places they like to sit. They watch, somewhat haughtily, when nonregulars navigate coffee shop intricacies—trying to find the sugar and creamer, figuring out the menu, discerning the best table to occupy. Coffee shop regulars know one another and congregate.

And so it was that after several months of early mornings at Aixois, a regular crowd formed. They included mostly middle-aged women, some men, and me, the communal daughter. Gay and straight, professors and doctors, chiropractors and journalists. We gathered on Saturdays and Sundays to check in with each other, to laugh and share, to break bread.

Our lives are a succession of communities: we’re part of one and then we move on, carrying the memories, the people, the places. It’s odd anymore for people to remain part of one community for their whole lives. They may maintain contact with the people, but the community shifts and changes. Such has happened with Aixois. I consider the men and women of that regular group of customers to be family. They are home to me. I no longer live one hundred paces from the door of Aixois; I no longer have the gift of breaking bread with these people daily or weekly. But it is a comfort that they still go, they still laugh and meet and talk. A little knockabout place indeed.

Possibility

This week's theme: Bread

I was accused a few weeks ago of not being very spontaneous. The conversation actually began based on my own admission of being a very difficult person to date. The person who made the accusation agreed, mainly because my standards are preposterously high (somewhere out there is my Mr. Darcy) and because, apparently, I am lacking in spontaneity.

At first I was offended by these remarks, particularly as we had begun our friendship rather recently. More importantly, having a Benedictine whose life is based on the recurring rhythms of work and prayer tell you that you're not spontaneous enough is a bit like having a reality TV star tell you that you're a narcissist. Yet, since that conversation I've been more attentive to the value I place on routine. I was shocked to discover that I am defined by my routines. Some of them make sense. I follow a prescribed pattern before I go to bed every night because I suffer from insomnia and the routine helps me fall asleep. I am in the library four nights a week because I'm worried about passing comps. But other routines (the way my morning starts, my exact time for eating lunch every day, the time at which I take my walk) are just patterns. They have no significance aside from the fact that I do these things at these times every day. This in itself is not a bad thing. However, the fact that when the routine is changed I become terribly angry is deeply problematic.

I am not spontaneous.

This lack of spontaneity has nothing to do with this week's theme of bread. Rather, it was my reflections on making bread (which is not something one does spontaneously) and sharing bread that brought me to think of this conversation. My deepest apologies to Lauren, but I've admirably circumvented the theme for this week.

I'm not sold on the poem's title and would happily take suggestions

***

Possibility

Tomorrow morning, you'll wake early,

pack a basket full of fruit and wine,

cold-press coffee and bread we baked together.

You'll put this in the backseat of the car,

along with the quilt your mother made us

and the copy of Lady Chatterly's Lover

you've been reading to me before I fall asleep.

You'll wake me when you're finished

and hand me the phone so I can call in sick.

We'll spend the entire day taking long walks and later,

lying on the quilt reading aloud to one another,

perhaps even letting the novel inspire us to reenact a scene or two.

Exhausted, we'll return home. Each already reveling in memories of the afternoon.

Although, it is possible that when you come to wake me

I'll remember my calendar full of appointments, the printer deadline

that must be met, the phone calls that have to be returned,

and that it's absolutely necessary that you return that bike lock to the store.