100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood: Daily Bread {10}
When I was a girl, my mother made all our bread. It took forever to rise and even longer to bake, and while we waited, the scent of it crusting up and browning inside the oven filled the house and tormented me.
I pressed my hands against the oven glass and looked in at the two loaves inside. One was the sacrificial loaf. As soon as the timer went off, we’d cut into that loaf, risking the release of steam that might burn our fingers. Each butter-saturated slice was devoured with absolutely no concern for whether or not it would ruin dinner.
The second loaf was never as good as the first because we were not allowed to touch it until it cooled entirely. That loaf was reserved for sack lunches and breakfast toast, even though the butter didn’t taste as good on breakfast toast as it did on bread fresh from the oven. But it nourished us, body and soul, and that was the most important thing. With three growing children and a husband to feed, my mom felt that day-old bread was a blessing. Two-day-old bread was a miracle.
These memories came back to me today as I mixed up a big batch of dough in my stand mixer. I don’t need to do much more than dump ingredients in and let the mixer run. But sometimes, I like to connect to the process a little more, to remind myself of the earthly necessity of providing for my children and the joy that comes from being able to do it well. So today, I decided to knead the dough myself.
A connection to the common
I took off my rings and put them on the windowsill, just like my mother used to, and the way I imagine her mother did before her. When I was a little girl, I used to wear Mom’s wedding ring while I watched her work. I liked how it carried the warmth of her finger in the heaviness of the gold.
I turned the dough out onto a floury counter the way I had seen her do so many times before. In my mind, I saw her hands covered in dough. But I felt the work of the kneading in my own arms. Sweetly scented yeast and the fragrance of freshly-ground flour connected me to the generations and generations of women who have come before me, an entire lineage of mothers who have served their families in the making of their daily bread.
Sometimes I feel alone in this parenting thing. But not today. Today I felt a part of something bigger.
The children crowded around, observing my work and begging for scraps. I remembered pestering my mother the same way, and how she would give us little bits of dough to work until they were grey, sticky, and completely inedible to anyone but a child.
“If I give each of you a piece, there won’t be anything left to bake!” I said.
My children considered this. I knew what I would have said.
“We don’t care!” they shouted, as if on cue. I gave them each a little piece of dough and noted how quickly the loaves diminished when five children had gotten their share. But some things are worth the memories.
It is a different world now than it was when I was a child, I thought as I waited for the bread to bake. Motherhood is all at once more complicated and less valued than ever before. Sometimes, I don’t think my great-grandmother would understand my struggles very well, and I wouldn’t be able to relate to hers.
But then, I wonder. Perhaps it is more the same than I know. I thought of my mother’s hands, shaping the loaves, and my grandmother’s, and mine. We are, all of us, mothers. We understand what it is to do our best to provide for our children. We are mothers who have lived in different times and under different circumstances but yet we have felt the same heartaches and triumphs that come with trying to raise children to the praise and glory of God.
It is a common loaf we share.
Daily Bread
Whether we feed our children with rice or with wheat, we understand. We are mothers.
On this beautiful day, I am thankful that I am not alone, that I share the common experience of uncommon motherhood with women of every space and time. I am glad to know that I am putting my hands to the work that has been done so well by so many others before me, and that, by the grace of God, will continue to be done by so many after me.
Today, I knead and bake and taste the bread of a thousand dailies, the bread of a thousand generation of mothers who are just like me.
100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood: Hospitality {9}
We are having company for dinner tonight, which means I am in a mad scramble to make it look like no one lives here. I have almost finished the lasagna but the floor still needs to be mopped and the kitchen is a wreck and there’s an entire corner of the living room where random Christmas trimmings have been collecting since the morning of December 25.
I look up at the clock where the minutes keep on ticking by and I realize that I never fixed that tear in the couch. I notice that I don’t have enough matching dishes and I’m completely out of napkins. I have forgotten all about making the brownies for dessert but I have become acutely aware of the fact that my children still have not learned to flush the toilet in the hall.
Anxious thoughts flood my mind. I don’t know what to do next. I can’t think. Then the children stomp through and demand my time with comments and questions that seem so menial in the light of my greater responsibility. “I had it first!” “He hit me!” “Can we have a snack?”
I feel anger welling up. Why are they bothering me now? Can’t they see I’m busy? “I don’t have time for this!” I snap. “Go find something to do!”
But what I really mean is, you are too much of a bother. You are getting in the way of the little show I’m trying to pull off. You are messing up the mirage that we have it all together.
Why do I do this to myself? I think as I mop the floor. Every time we have company over, it’s the same way. I fall into a trap of trying to be perfect. I suddenly become dissatisfied with my home and my children and my husband and especially myself. My husband can never be helpful enough and the children can never play quietly enough and I can never do enough to make myself look much better than I really am.
It’s the old hypocrite in me coming out to play. I talk a big talk about grace, but on Friday nights when company is coming over, I don’t want it. I want a clean house. I want to keep up appearances. I will worry about all that sin that is death after the company goes home and no one cares if I have dirty dishes in my sink.
After every one goes home, I will apologize to my husband and the kids and say things like, “I’m sorry I was a little cranky,” because saying “I’m sorry I was a little cranky” is easier than saying, “I’m sorry I yelled at you” or “I’m sorry I didn’t have time for you” or “I’m sorry I loved a clean kitchen sink more than you.”
I will say it sincerely enough, though, as if I learned something. But really, all I want is to justify the tyrannical behavior that got me what I wanted. I acted unlovingly toward my husband and children but I got a clean house. It seems like a fair enough trade.
But of course, it isn’t. Trading grace for works is the ransom of a birthright for a pot of stew. It is a cheap exchange that leaves everything around me tainted no matter how hard I clean.
Today, getting the house clean in time seemed to be more important than love or grace or any of those things that tend to leave dirty footprints on my floor. Today, checking off the to-do list was more important than being honest and real and kind.
But on this beautiful day, God did not leave me in my sin. He reminded me of grace. Deep down, I know that a friend will not care if my house is clean or not. I certainly don’t care if hers is. In fact, I don’t mind if there are a few crumbs on the floor or dust on the windowsills because I can understand that. That makes me feel right at home and I love her all the more because she trusts me enough to know that it is okay for me to see her smudges.
And I am nothing if not a little smudgy. I fall short just like everyone else. I understand that, I think, until it’s time for me to be on the receiving end of grace. Then I don’t like it. Then, I want to work it out so I can give grace without having to swallow any of it myself.
But it’s not enough to give grace. I must receive it. I must let people in to the mess and the brokenness and trust that they will love me all the more for my weakness. I must hold on to the promise that Christ will indeed be more glorified through the broken pot than the whitewashed vessel.
On this beautiful day, I got to be a broken pot, an open door, a woman acquainted with grace.