A Moment

It is cooler today, with a light rain.  Inside, the house smells of freshly baked bread.  Outside, the breeze brings the scents of rain and lilacs.  I've been gathering up my sewing for Sunday, when some of the girls are going with me to help take photos for my portfolio.  I like looking at the fabric, lying in a heap, all the colors together.  It's been an idyllic, dreamy sort of day.  I've been alone since Aaron left for work, and it's been one of those days when I think sometimes I will forget how to speak.  The silence goes so deep that I don't like to break it.  In a moment I will leave for class and there will be music, life, movement, laughter.  That is a dream of a different kind.  Just as pleasant, but as alien to this other as the fresh-baked bread to the lilacs and rain.

Baking

My bread dough is rising on the counter, filling the house with its warm, yeasty smell.  I love making bread -- kneading it, watching it grow, cutting into the fresh loaves and watching them steam.  People always seem surprised to learn that I still bake at home after baking at work every day, but it's really a very different thing.  At work I always bake the same thing, or at least a variation of the same thing, in a designated amount in a certain way.  Even though I enjoy it, the creative aspect is almost completely lost.  Besides, I am at heart a flinger.  I rarely measure things, and like deciding to change things at the last minute.  Like Aaron's birthday cake.  I knew I wanted cream cheese frosting, then at the last minute discovered a mini Bailey's in the liquor cabinet.  Turns out cream cheese frosting is tasty but cream cheese frosting with Bailey's is fantastic.  My last-minute ideas don't always work so well, and I have had to throw things out before, but it's all part of the fun of the thing.  I went through a childhood faze when I would get up very early in the morning before anyone else and go into the kitchen to "experiment".  I think I did it early in the morning at least partly because if my parents knew what I was going to do they would stop me.  Also, I always had a grand sort of notion that I was going to create a masterpiece and surprise everyone. My mother never tried to put an end to this that I can remember, I think because she is herself a very creative person, and she didn't know how to put an halt to my culinary escapades without also squashing my creativity. So I would tiptoe into the kitchen nearly every morning and play with ingredients.  Sometimes the things were palatable, and sometimes I was forced to try to dispose of them before anyone found out.  On one particularly memorable occasion I recall having just heard that putting apple sauce in cake would make it moist.  Therefore, feeling that I could not possibly go wrong, I proceeded to bake a large cake that was approximately half apple sauce, with a very minimal amount of flour.  My long-suffering family, after this, suggested that perhaps I limit the size of my "experiments" in future.