Push, Whack, Shove, Wallop, Pound

Kneading, I could see my grandmother’s strong arms working the dough on the bread board by the wood stove. Bread dough, she’d say, is as independent as a 2-year-old. Both require hard work if they are to develop properly.

I fold outside to inside and push with the heels of my hands, rotate the globe a quarter turn, crease and push, again and again while my brain replays a conversation with a young friend about Western problems: subdivisions, zoning, water.

“But what can one person doooooo?” she wailed.

Kneading, I consider that universal question. When the warm mass sticks to my fingers, I dip a bit of home-ground wheat flour to scatter across the board. Turn, fold, PUSH; turn, fold, WHACK; turn, bend, SHOVE. My muscles hum in harmony as natural as the bread’s ingredients.

Linda with a freshly baked loaf, 2009.

Baking bread is cheaper and more consistent than other forms of therapy, and the results are edible. One can’t nibble a human therapist, any more than one can successfully treat tension with alcohol or drugs.

Up to my elbows in bread dough, I WALLOP an irrational argument, POUND my point home. Decisions I’ve avoided for weeks make themselves as I poke a finger into the shiny dome to check the tension. When I plop the dough into my grandmother’s green porcelain bowl to rise, we’re both bouncy and full of vitality.

Until lately, I’ve baked mostly for my own well-being, but my friend Marty taught me a better way.

What can one person doooooo?

In January, Marty baked and handed out 15 loaves: to the wife of the neighbor who has been accused of a crime. To the woman suffering from cancer. In February, 45 loaves.

At 81, Marty is active in church activities, busy with children, grandchildren and interests so varied I’m always discovering new ones despite a decade of correspondence. She travels, teaches morning and evening classes, takes part in a book club, writes letters.

In March, she gave away 53 loaves; April, 46. In her kitchen, young women learn the art of mixing, kneading, shaping the loaves they’ll take to their own kitchens to bake. Marty’s prayer ingredient is optional, but the smell of fresh-made bread blesses each home.

May, 40 loaves, including bread for a family mourning the death of their mother. “This somehow gives me a gift,” she explains, “and I guess the only thing I can name this gift is ‘peace.’” She maintains a large home, dozens of plants inside and around it; she sends me pictures of her cats. She’s kept baking bread throughout the ugly incidents life can provide, including cancer.

Marty Mather (1927-2020)

June, 55 loaves, and July — in Kansas! — 72. She sends me clippings about Kansas politics along with her opinions and obituaries of people who lived with good humor and good works.

August, 46 loaves. “When I was a child and my mother made bread she would cut off a slice when it came out of the oven hot, slather it with butter, cover it with brown sugar, fold it together and give us a “love” sandwich.” Her grandchildren, learning to knead dough at ages 2 and 4, gobbled love sandwiches.

September, 35; October, 47. Last year during Lent, instead of giving up coffee or chocolate, she gave bread to the workers in her church, and to others in the community. “This brings me joy,” she says, adding, “which in a sense is a selfish way of looking at it.”

The gift of bread carries with it history ancient beyond reckoning, symbolism that applies equally to every homeland, every religion. November, 60 loaves. Marty admits enjoying the fragrance of baking bread, “filling the house like a lovely incense.” And more: “Making homemade bread is not a talent or really a skill . . . It only takes planning, time, energy and love.”

In December, while headlines screamed about stress, Marty gave away 51 loaves. I bite into butter-slathered hot bread. The universe wobbles and then settles into an age-old throb of grace. Homemade bread. Homemade love.

Linda M. Hasselstrom
Windbreak House Retreats
Hermosa, South Dakota

© 2022, Linda M. Hasselstrom

#  #  #

Photo of Marty holding a loaf of bread used with permission of her family.

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In its original form, this essay was published in the “Writers on the Range” series in High Country News in 2008.

https://www.hcn.org/wotr/17634

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Read more about Marty Mather’s life works and legacy at her Church’s blog

https://foundation.blogs.cor.org/marty-mather/

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The Relatives Who Live in My Head

The Relatives Who Live in My Head

show up just as I slide into memories

of grandmother’s smile as she basted the turkey.

They crowd into the kitchen

without invitation. They say

it’s just not Thanksgiving without

Milly’s broccoli and cheese casserole.

The truth is, none of them ate any of it.

Milly, my mother, elaborately ate one spoonful

that day, and we ate the rest for a week.

 

The relatives who live in my head say

it’s just not Thanksgiving without

Hazel’s oyster dressing. We all took that,

you bet, because Hazel would say,

“You missed the oyster dressing,”

and slap it on our plates herself.

 

The relatives who live in my head

are just like real relatives.

I don’t see them for months.

They don’t call, or write, or visit.

But come Thanksgiving, Christmas,

or Easter, here they are again.

 

The relatives who live in my head murmur,

“Only one kind of cranberry sauce?”

“Where are the green beans with slivered almonds?”

And what was that stuff on them–

cream of chicken soup?

“Sorry,” I say,

but I’m not. They’re muttering,

“No home-baked rolls? No sweet potatoes

with marshmallows and brown sugar?”

 

The relatives who live

in my head mumble, “That pie crust

doesn’t look home-made.” I hum as I

make a pasta salad. “What’s that stuff?”

say the relatives who live in my head.

“Where’s the Jell-O and marshmallows?”

 

“I love you all,” I tell them,

“But buzz off,” pouring

a wee dram of Scotch to sip

as I baste the turkey. My life mate

mashes the potatoes to creamy paste

swimming in butter. We seat ourselves,

brimming with thankfulness.

 

Poem © 2011, Linda M. Hasselstrom

Find this poem in my book Dirt Songs: A Plains Duet, co-written with Twyla M. Hansen– 50 poems by each of us. (2011, The Backwaters Press, Omaha, NE)

 

Linda M. Hasselstrom
Windbreak House Writing Retreats
Hermosa, South Dakota

© 2019, Linda M. Hasselstrom

# # #

 

Those Thanksgiving Pie-Makers

A poem of thanksgiving, gratitude, and remembrance.

by Linda M. Hasselstrom

Those Thanksgiving Pie-Makers

All over America today, women search
for their grandmother’s pumpkin pie recipe.
Some rush to the store for condensed milk,
or whipping cream. Or stir up powdered milk
if they are poor, or on a diet,
or live too far from town.

In a Wisconsin farm house a red-haired woman
measures salt in a dented spoon.
In California, a thin girl stirs and puffs a cigarette,
puffs and stirs. In Wyoming,
I dust clove powder over my grandmother’s
green glass bowl and reach for the nutmeg grater.
In New Mexico, a brown-eyed woman
sprinkles cayenne. In Iowa, a man beats eggs,
recalling for his children how their mother looked.

Grandma always left me to measure
dry ingredients while she walked down
to her hen house. She came back holding four
warm brown eggs in her open hands
just as I licked brown sugar off my lips,
thinking she wouldn’t notice.

So today, twenty-five years after she died,
I lap brown sugar from a spoon just
so I’ll remember how she grinned at me.
While I stir, my oven beeps. Hers
was fired with wood she chopped. To test
the heat, she’d dip her fingers
in the water bucket she’d pumped full
that morning, flick spattering drops, and nod.

All over America, families are studying
gratitude. Some women slip
a pie into the oven, and hide
the cardboard box in the garbage.
Others light pumpkin-scented candles,
thankful anyway– though my grandmother
might not think they have good reason.

I crimp the rim of each pie crust
with three fingers, just the way
she taught me; make a salad
while the fragrance surges out
the open kitchen window. Next door,
perhaps the drug dealers open their eyes,
inhale, and almost remember.

Grandmother, may this pumpkin perfume
rise up to whatever heaven you inhabit,
sanctifying all my love and memories.
Listen: countless voices chant together
an infinity of thankful hymns.

# # #

© 2006, Linda M. Hasselstrom

— First published for Empty Bowls 2006, United Church of Christ, Brookings, S.D.

— Dirt Songs: A Plains Duet, with Twyla M. Hansen
published 2011, The Backwaters Press, Omaha, NE
50 poems by each author; find this poem on pages 98-99

This poem is copyrighted. Do not reprint without permission from the author.