When I was eleven, my mom was the Young Women's president of our ward. For one Wednesday night activity she taught the twelve to seventeen-year-old girls to make bread. She took dough ready to bake, dough ready to knead, and ingredients so they could actually make the dough. When she got home she commented that the girls really got into the kneading part, and they kneaded the bread so much that my mom thought it might have been too much. When the bread rose again and was baked, it turned out to be the "lightest, fluffiest, most delicious bread" in my mom's words.
When I was in elementary school, I would get out my homemade lunch in the cafeteria and look around at the other kids' lunches and just ache for a white, store-bought, Wonder bread sandwich instead of my homemade wheat bread sandwich. When there were so many of us kids that my mom couldn't keep up with the baking, she switched to buying discounted Mrs. Baird's bread at their outlet (day old) store in town.
My mom kept baking bread, though. The first kind of bread she taught me to make was her "Easy French Bread" recipe. Few ingredients, minimal kneading. It was perfect for Saturday morning chore day because you had to set a timer and stir the dough every ten minutes for fifty minutes. We would race to see what we could accomplish in ten minutes. I took the French bread recipe with me to college and amazed roommates, ward members, and other friends.
Once I turned 18, I was my mom's go-to partner for many, many visits in connection with her leadership responsibilities in Relief Society, visiting teaching, and serving others. Most often she had a loaf of bread to take along with the spiritual message. Who wouldn't welcome a warm loaf of bread? Meals to new moms and the sick or elderly included a loaf of bread.
A few years ago I started making most of my family's bread and began a quest for homemade whole wheat bread to rival the soft white bread I had so pined for as a child. Assisted by a stand mixer, I regularly mixed up loaves of bread for us and to share. I was so used to making bread that when the mixer wouldn't knead the bread anymore and just died one day, I figured I might as well finally learn to make bread completely by hand. It turns out that it's not that hard, but it does take some effort, and it's very therapeutic.
As I knead, I think about my mom raving over those teen girls' kneading skills and wonder to myself if you can really over knead bread. Every. single. time. (I have since googled it and resolved the question in my mind.) I feel a sweet connection to my mom and an entire family heritage when I make bread. I get sentimental that way, and it's one of the reasons I continue to do it.
On my mom's birthday the year after she died, my husband recognized that I was having a hard time and asked if I would like to go to the cemetery and visit her grave. The thought hadn't even occurred to me before then, but in that moment I realized that I did want to, and that I wanted to plant some flowers there since the cemetery encourages it. The following year we did the same thing. This year I was thinking about it several weeks before the date, and I felt impressed to do something different to celebrate her 61st birthday.
We live in the same ward as my parents, in the same neighborhood as my parents, my kids go to the same school my siblings went to and where my mom sometimes worked as a substitute teacher. We know lots of people who knew and loved my mom, so I decided that over the course of the two weeks until my mom's birthday, I could bake 61 loaves of bread and give them away. I didn't tell many people what I was doing, but a few asked and were touched to find out. It was a lot of baking. Most of them were mini loaves. I tried to make a special effort to give bread to people who knew my mom, but I didn't limit it completely.
My daughter Ellen was my partner in crime and extremely excited about the whole idea. She asked me daily what the bread count was, and how many more loaves we needed to reach 61 by grandma's birthday. In the end it was a beautiful and emotional couple of weeks. I cannot begin to describe how it felt to deliver gifts to unsuspecting friends and family. I absolutely felt like the messenger, the deliverer. I had to consciously stop myself from saying "this is from my mom" as I handed over a loaf of bread, but that is what it felt like every time. It's the kind of gift I think my mom would have loved since she was a giver her entire life.
Happy birthday, Mom.
