Mommy's Holiday Loaf

My mom didn't know how to bake bread. Her mother, Jennie, learned how to bake from my dad's mother, Goldie. Since Jennie and Grandpa Pal lived with us for so many years and Jennie dominated most of the life including the kitchen, my mom was at a total loss after Jennie died. She wanted to bake bread. My dad taught her how. It was a sort of secret event in the kitchen; lots of whispering. I stayed out of the way. But ours was a small house so one could sit in the living room and not miss a word spoken in the kitchen.

Once my mom figured it out, she practiced often. She got so good at it, she had to hide the warm loaves from dad and me. An exercise in futility as the saying goes. We'd walk home from the subway together when we were lucky enough to connect. And those even luckier evenings, when we'd walk into the house to the surround of sweet yeast and the warm, -- well, we'd look at each other immediately sealing a contract. Silence! Now, if we were really, really lucky, mom would be out or napping. And if we were caught at the kitchen counter, our coats still on, breaking bread together -- my mother would feign anger. Ah, the rituals of life. And love.

It was an exceptionally bleak winter our first year in Massachusetts. We were renting a house in Middleton. At that time, there were very few houses on route 62, and almost nothing in Middleton center. There was at one terrible snow storm that stranded my husband on route 1 for almost 24 hours. The electricity went out in the house. We had a fireplace but no wood. So I wrapped my little boys in blankets and burned the kitchen chairs in the fireplace. That winter I decided I needed to learn to bake bread. I remember the excitement of taking the loaves out of the oven! At this point in my marriage, I had taught myself to cook, to bake pies and cookies and such. But bread!! That has a mystique of it's own. I remember that it took a lot less time for the bread to disappear than it had to bake it. I also remember phoning my mom to tell her of my conquest. She understood the small triumph of it. She'd been there, too.

Mom left us many things to remember. Her glorious "holiday loaf" is one of the these. A very large challah; three braided loafs stacked on top of each other. Raisins and almonds in the bread and blanched almonds decorating the top. It became her signature gift; whenever we went to someone's home for dinner or when we attended an event -- mom was asked to bring her "holiday loaf." It was the centerpiece at Thanksgiving and all the autumn holy days.

She wrote out the recipe for me, but I don't remember attempting it in her lifetime. When she died, Bonpapa -- her then husband -- gave me a little book in which my mother wrote her thoughts and tucked away clippings and recipes and such. In the book was a yellowing article from the New York Times; it was a recipe for a Swedish Christmas bread called Hoska. I glanced down the recipe; grabbed the copy of my mom's "loaf" she'd written out for me -- and there it was. My mother's challah -- my mother's brilliant offering to every bar mitzvah, bris, holy day, etc. etc. etc., was actually a Swedish Christmas bread. I can't begin to tell you how I loved knowing this! Brava Mina Coburn! Truly a Renaissance woman!!

I baked that bread yesterday to bring to my cousins for the Rosh Hashana dinner they so generously invite us to. And I brought this story as well. This one's for you! Happy New Year!

Now is the Winter....

It is a contradiction, I know, to love the changing seasons and yet despair the winter cold.  But I do that; always have.  In the past ten years, the approach of the cold has filled me with foreboding.  Yet here I am still living in the North East, dreaming of Barbados or -- at the very least -- a working fireplace.  It is, with my economy, not a simple matter to relocate.

This winter, its chill preceding its official date, is complicated by chilling events.  I lost my job last May, and have not been able to find something since.  "Admins" I'm told are not in great demand.  My daughter, recovering from mitral valve replacement surgery, is back in hospital with pancreatitis.  Almost two weeks now.  This is her third hospitalization since July, and her little five year old is confused and bereft.  It has been very difficult for us all.  Christmas is something of a blur.  And while I am so looking forward to a trip to California the day after Christmas to visit with my oldest son and his lovely family, I approach it with trepidation.  Will my daughter be okay?  So many cancellations since July.  It's hard to proceed with optimisim.  

I am kvetching; that wasn't my intention.  My thought this morning was all the different kinds of winter one deals with -- Macbeth's not the least of these -- the winter of our discontent.  It is best I think to huddle -- not quite like "once upon a time..." at the general store pot-bellied stove or four to a bed.  But to have a society; to get together with family and friends and surround oneself with the warmth of affection and good conversation.  Barring that, there is the apology for the lack of the latter:  a good book and a comfy afghan.  A glass of brandy doesn't hurt either.  

The shortest day approaches; from then on minute by minute the days lengthen and it will be Spring.  Ever hopeful. 

I wish whatever readers of this there may be the warmth of love in this season.