Bread of Life
Bread of Life
I wrote this piece some time ago to honor my Uncle Javier, a hardworking, humble man who taught me about life and making bread. It's in the first person, from the perspective of one of his sons.
Why wouldn't anyone come by? We might as well have asked a wall because no answers came. The sun set on pots full of food and empty tables, and a breeze was more likely to carry away the napkins than any customers. It couldn’t have been the location. Or was it? Just a few months before, students flowed into our house, but now they just walked past us on their way to class and some other place to eat.
We tried. We kept cooking. We passed out flyers.
We wanted to make it work one last time.
The restaurant had been our main source of income. It paid for our school, clothes, and life in Morelia, a growing city that was becoming more expensive by the day. Papá and Mamá called us into their bedroom.
“Nos vamos, nos regresamos al pueblo.”
My heart sank, and the tears surprised me. My two older brothers quietly walked away to their beds. I didn't sleep. I don't think anyone did. We stopped going to school and took a week to pack and leave.
We sold many belongings and gave away most of the food, including the garlic, tomatoes, and chiles. Neighbors dropped by for those items. The stove, the refrigerator, the old couch, and the two beds would join us in a few days, along with a few boxes of clothes. A friend volunteered his pickup. We loaded up our pistachio green 1970 Opel.
My oldest brother took some boxes on the bus and went ahead of us. Then, we left two days before the month ended. We wanted to avoid paying another month of rent. My mother tried to hide her tears, wiping and wiping them away as she changed the radio dial. My father was quiet as we drove from the hills surrounding Morelia and into the forests near Pátzcuaro. My sister slept with her doll. I looked out the window at the fading lights of the city. The tears came again. The three-hour trip felt like a three-day journey of failure and questions. “What if we had sold at different hours? What if we had changed the menu every week? What if…what if…?”
A large, dusty beehive oven would provide part of the answers. Aunts, uncles, and cousins arrived to help us clean and settle into our old house. We helped my father clear the wood planks off the oven. I crawled inside to sweep it out and mop it with an old rag. My father tracked down some firewood and ocote, ordered some sacks of flour, and looked for clients for our bread. Instead of making quick meals for hungry students, we would bake bolillos, conchas, bisquets. Nothing fancy, just what most people wanted.
Between 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning, my father would rise from his warm bed. The metal clang of the bathroom door was the first sound in the house six days a week. Other melancholy noises streamed in from the cold alpine air – the zoom of a lonely car or a truck emitting a barrage of gunshots from the exhaust into the wind as it downshifted, coming around the bend and into the straightaway passing through the town. And back then, perhaps a rooster would crow.
He would drink water, get dressed, brush his teeth, and wash his bronze hands and forearms in the freezing water of the pila, needles stabbing his thick skin. After adjusting his thick-framed glasses, he would switch on the lone circular light of the gray, unpainted cinder block bakery. He would tie on his apron and hat.
And then he would shake the three of us out of slumber.
“Ya es hora.”
Sometimes, it took two or three calls for us to get up.
And, so, we began kneading, pulling, and shaping a new life. We did it all by hand. No machines. We poured flour from heavy sacks onto a large wooden table, mixed in water, yeast, and sugar, and then we would work the dough with our fingers, palms, and arms, with the energy of the muscles from our backs and chest, and our legs – my father showed us how, as my two brothers and I followed along. Back and forth, stretching over the table. Back and forth. It was a painful way to wake up, but we had little choice. If we didn’t bake, there would be nothing to sell or eat. The first few months back in the pueblo were the most difficult. The days were long, ending at 7:00 p.m. And sales were short. Sometimes, we were left with entire baskets of bread and little money to buy more flour.
And yet, that oven that had waited years for us to return taught me that hope is sometimes found in the grace of hard work and that new life can be found in simple pieces of bread.