Baking day

How making bread assuages still creative urge and brings a sense of timelessness! While now the smells of loaves in the hot oven flow throughout the house, I think of how those Hebrew women long ago with children at their heels took flight and carried the unrisen dough into the dark Egyptian night. Their ``staff of life's'' long history had meaning far beyond my power to tell.

My hands in flour mixing the lard in, stirring yeast with its familiar faintly sour odor, then the kneading pulls brought back memories of home.

Walking from school on baking day across the moor was eager, quick. No thought of wandering around, no loitering to stoop and pick the heather or the pods of broom for bread was cooling even then on kitchen fender as I walked. That world of long ago brings bread and timeless blessing to this room.