Secret Ingredient
A man I know shared this story from his youth with me. I think he was glad to have the opportunity
to finally share it with someone –
I’ll call him Dave.
Dave came from a very large family.
When Dave was a child many of his extended family either were first
generation born Americans, or they had come directly from France between the
two world wars. They settled in the same
general area of northeast Wisconsin – most in the same small town.
Family ties were so deep that Dave could not have been
able to imagine a Sunday afternoon without a house full of family. They enjoyed each other’s company. There was music – a little dancing thrown in
at no extra charge. They drank homemade
wine. They told stories and
laughed. But mostly they ate.
Although it was important that they shared the meal
together, it was also important to the cooks – mostly the women, that the meal
was delicious. Regardless of what the
main course was, it was always accompanied with Dave’s mother’s bread. The
crust was crisp; inside the loaf was light and airy. Dave has been to many homes, restaurants and has
even traveled widely in France, but he swears that he has never tasted bread
better than his mother’s. It is assured
that he never will, because Dave knows the secret ingredient that his mother
used, even though she never told anyone, even Dave.
That his mother’s bread was made with a secret
ingredient was not a secret. Whenever
anyone asked why her bread was so delicious, his mother said straight out that it
was because of the secret ingredient.
But she refused to tell anyone what the special ingredient was. By the time Dave came along the secret
ingredient was an accepted fact, no one pressed the issue.
When Dave was thirteen he became determined to
discover the secret ingredient. His
mother baked bread every Saturday morning.
Dave made sure to wake early one Saturday. He snuck downstairs as quietly as possible
when he heard his mother moving around in the kitchen, and took up a position
where he could watch her unobserved as long as he didn’t give himself away with
an untimely cough, or some other sound.
His mother worked at the kitchen table with her back
to Dave. He saw her add the ingredients
together into her large silver bread mixing pan. He was no expert to be sure, but he didn’t
see anything that she added to the bread that seemed unusual. He was confused.
Then, just before she began to knead the dough, his
mother made the sign of the cross. Dave
perked up. He heard her softly say
something, but with her back to him, he couldn’t quite make it out. Shortly though he could make out that his
mother was crying. It wasn’t a loud
sobbing, but soft and steady cry. He
heard her speak again. He was sure that
she had said, “Mama”. And then a few
minutes later he heard, “Maria”. Dave
knew that Maria was the name of his mother’s sister; she had died in an
accident as a young girl. As his mother
kneaded she spoke many names, some Dave had known, some he had only heard
stories about because they had died before he was born. His mother’s tears continued. When she was finished kneading she made the
sign of the cross, and wiped her eyes with a dish towel.
At thirteen, Dave was not sure what he just
witnessed. But he felt regret for having
spied on his mother. He knew that he had
invaded a very private place of hers. He
crept quietly back upstairs. He couldn’t
bring himself to ask his mother what it all meant, because he didn’t want her
to realize that he had spied on her. He
wanted to hug her and console her, but again he couldn’t bring himself to tell
her that he watched her that morning. He
never did tell her.
It took some additional maturity and contemplation for
Dave to eventually come to an understanding of that Saturday morning. His mother prayed for, prayed with, and
mourned her dear family members who had died.
Those prayers and the love she continued experience for them and with
them brought the tears that traced the outline of her face and fell one by one
into the bread dough. You could say that
those tears were the secret ingredient to his mother’s bread, but it really was
the love that ensured that there was always more family gathered around those
Sunday dinners than most people were ever aware of. But his mother knew. And Dave eventually came to understand.
His Peace,
Deacon Dan
Photo by Ivan Rohovchenko on Unsplash
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