Dancing On My Own by Robyn
When scanning my notes on what to do a quick write-up on today, I come across a line that just reads ‘the loan bread.’ I forget what this means, before going over to my freezer at lunchtime to see a sliced loaf of sourdough I haven’t eaten yet. Oh yeah, I remember now. Two weeks ago I went to buy bread from the bakery a fifteen-minute walk away from me, Boulangerie Premiere Moisson. They have good sourdough at a democratic price. It was late in the day on a Sunday, probably the bakery’s most busy shopping day. I knew my chances of getting any bread weren’t great.
Boulangerie Premiere Moisson must sell over seven hundred and fifty loaves a day. It has a long, sprawling wooden rack displaying baguettes, sourdoughs, pullmans, focaccias, ryes, multi-grains, spelts, pastries, and cakes. And when I arrive, at 4:40 pm, twenty minutes before closing, one loaf, a whole-grain sourdough miche, sits alone behind the glass, somewhat sadly. I can’t help but anthropomorphize. I imagine it baked in the morning, along with all the other 100s of breads, eager and excited to be sold, hopefully eaten fresh. The life of a loaf of bread is a short, purposeful one. It doesn’t need to spend time worrying about what it will accomplish in this world. Once it is conceived, and then taken out of the oven, it knows very well what it has to do: be eaten, eaten well.
In this regard, I’m somewhat jealous of bread. It took me over twenty years to figure out that I wanted to write for a living, and still, doubt creeps up here and there. True, the bread may be frozen for months, if not years, turned into bread crumbs, or used as a pudding, an obscure dessert, or maybe even have canned anchovies spread all over it, which I assume the bread doesn’t like, but regardless, bread knows it’s there to be eaten, and eaten it will be. So I can only imagine the shame and embarrassment that this whole-grain sourdough miche must have felt when it witnessed, over and over again throughout the day, all of its colleagues bought and sold. It’s a bit like when sports captains choose their teams one by one. The last people chosen are always packed with a sense of awkward self-consciousness. That’s what this loaf of bread must have felt, but only worse! If I get chosen last on an intramural softball team, the humiliation quickly wains, it’s not my life’s purpose to play intramural co-ed softball. But this loaf of bread, this poor, lonely multi-grain sourdough miche, it has only one job to fulfill, one raison d’être, and at 4:40 pm on that Sunday, with 20 minutes left of the business day, it was a failure. It may have ended up eaten by one of Boulangerie Premiere Moisson’s employees, but you know, to the bread, this just wouldn’t have felt the same as being sold to a hungry consumer. It’s a multi-grain sourdough miche, so naturally a bit conceited. It probably thinks it’s too good for the bakery’s employees, or worse, a homeless shelter.
‘Is there any bread left?’ I stupidly ask the man working there, as we’re both staring at the only loaf on the rack. He explains what it is. I buy it. I ask him to slice it, sensing the bread’s joy and relief as it feels the automated knives puncture its crust. When I get home, much to this relieved bread’s dismay, I don’t take a bite, I’m not hungry. I put it right into the freezer, only to be found, today, at 12:45 pm. And it was toasted. One slice eaten with sliced tomatoes, cheese, olive oil. The other with peanut butter, jam. The bread got along well with its counterparts. This great loaf of bread must have felt the way a writer does after spending the day finishing a new chapter of one of his books, editing an old one, writing something ancillary in between, a short essay on the side; a job well done, a purpose fulfilled.