Bread Pudding

Silent house, oven on, 350 degrees Fahrenheit. 

 

I would normally be baking the bread pudding with Rose. Rose is at work, their last day of work, and it is almost Christmas. It’s not near enough to the holiday to bake the gingerbread cookies yet, but near enough to want something special. Too much bread in the breadbox is reason enough to make something new, and time is running out.

 

Pandemic skills. We’ve been baking more, Rose and me. It’s a surprise pleasure to be able to cook for entertainment, a surprise to me anyway. Many cannot. Socially distanced desperation snakes its way through parking lots. A pittance of canned goods at the end, to feed a family for another week. It is a marvel to me how we have escaped that fate, at least for now.

 

Years ago, just a few years, really, I baked this bread pudding recipe for about the first time, and brought it to Mom. She thrilled to it in a way I could not have predicted. There, in her standardized assisted living apartment, I had stumbled into a tripwire of some childhood memory she had never shared with me. Likely something that didn’t seem that important at the time, but suddenly seemed fresh and precious.

 

Cutting bread is always soothing. I don’t know why. Soft bread offers no resistance to the steel blade, falls into orderly patterns on the board. Ordinary bread absurdly transformed into a dish to share.

 

It has been a while since I’ve baked alone. Rose is often the inspiration in such projects, and I am just the motor. Still, we make a good team. Carrot Cake, Date Roll, Banana Muffins, Banana Bread, Apple Crisp, Lemon Pie, Lemon Bars, Cheesecake, Flan, and cookies, a few. Often a success, always a mess, we conclude with small celebrations and a quick analysis, of what to try again, and what to do better next time. I am surprised to discover that we have both acquired some skills in this area. I am surprised, too, that we have covered some ground this way -- years of my child’s now waning childhood. And that it has made us better.

 

Mix, pour, the pan scrapes the baking rack. Timer set.

 

Rose should have been at school now. It would be nearly time for them to come home for winter break, from their third year as a university student, a junior. Pandemic intervened, I was surprised to find myself grateful that they had concocted a plan to skip school for this semester, to find a job in the meantime, to live at home, and to wait out the disease a while longer.

 

In another year, we would have been opposed to, or at least wary of an interruption to their schooling. Their first job, in a rising pandemic, with skyrocketing unemployment in every industry. We thought they would discover that it’s just not that easy. But there they went, and instead, discovered they could do it. They are proving to be resilient, this one. Their creativity runs deep, it is original and daring.  

 

Rose will arrive home today, from the final day of their well-planned plan. And so today I bake. The house smells warm with a foolish medley of such sweet things. We will be a family of three for a while longer, and we will wait out this storm. ­

 

12-16-2020