Wonderbread
How do we learn to give?
We give because we saw it, experienced it. Because it was the quiet, right thing to do, like the box on the top shelf of our parents' closet that we climb and peek into when our parents are away, and because it's hidden, we know it's important.
It comes back to us. Like the sweet smell of scalded milk and melting butter brings back the memory of homemade bread and the sight of loaf pans lined up under dish towels on the kitchen table. At least once a week, sometimes on Saturdays, I would watch my mother pour the hot milk over the butter and stir the flour in the green Tupperware bread bowl, the kind of bowl I still make bread in. Waiting for the loaves to come out of the oven, she would scold us if we cut into one too soon, too hot for even Grandma De Master's perfect bread knife to cut it cleanly, without mashing it into a sticky mess.
We ate that bread every day, and when one loaf was gone, a new one would come up from the freezer in the basement, stored in a bag leftover from some rare store-bought loaf, washed out and hung to dry over the bathtub.
My friends ate sandwiches made of Wonderbread. And I knew, when I saw them take those sandwiches from their lunch bags, so thin, so white, a flattened line of purple jelly or processed cheese holding the sides together, that I was better than them, because my mother made our bread. We were more sensible, more thrifty, didn't waste our money on that stuff that smashed itself into a gluey mess. And probably they were thinking the same thing. We're better than she is, that girl who has to eat bread saved in rinsed-out bread bags hanging from a clip in the bathtub.
What separates us from them, we who wash the bread bags of our selves so they can be used again, in places where we might not be cool, and we might not get paid, and it might cost us the invitation to the sleepover at the popular kids' house? What makes us different? And each one probably looking with disdain at the other, thinking, "I'm so much better than they are. I'm doing it right." And maybe a bit of envy.
We give because we saw it, experienced it. Because it was the quiet, right thing to do, like the box on the top shelf of our parents' closet that we climb and peek into when our parents are away, and because it's hidden, we know it's important.
It comes back to us. Like the sweet smell of scalded milk and melting butter brings back the memory of homemade bread and the sight of loaf pans lined up under dish towels on the kitchen table. At least once a week, sometimes on Saturdays, I would watch my mother pour the hot milk over the butter and stir the flour in the green Tupperware bread bowl, the kind of bowl I still make bread in. Waiting for the loaves to come out of the oven, she would scold us if we cut into one too soon, too hot for even Grandma De Master's perfect bread knife to cut it cleanly, without mashing it into a sticky mess.
We ate that bread every day, and when one loaf was gone, a new one would come up from the freezer in the basement, stored in a bag leftover from some rare store-bought loaf, washed out and hung to dry over the bathtub.
My friends ate sandwiches made of Wonderbread. And I knew, when I saw them take those sandwiches from their lunch bags, so thin, so white, a flattened line of purple jelly or processed cheese holding the sides together, that I was better than them, because my mother made our bread. We were more sensible, more thrifty, didn't waste our money on that stuff that smashed itself into a gluey mess. And probably they were thinking the same thing. We're better than she is, that girl who has to eat bread saved in rinsed-out bread bags hanging from a clip in the bathtub.
What separates us from them, we who wash the bread bags of our selves so they can be used again, in places where we might not be cool, and we might not get paid, and it might cost us the invitation to the sleepover at the popular kids' house? What makes us different? And each one probably looking with disdain at the other, thinking, "I'm so much better than they are. I'm doing it right." And maybe a bit of envy.
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