The Spirit of Baking

I was born here.

I remember how the sun felt, shining through the window in the nursery as my mother rocked with me in her mother’s old rocking chair. She had been gifted the chair before I was born, and my fondest memories of my infancy are of sitting in that chair with her as we rocked and she sang to me. I don’t remember the song, but if I ever heard the tune again I would fly back there in an instant.

I grew up here.

My parents owned a small bakery that was situated on the first floor of our two-story home, and I grew up amidst the smells of freshly baked bread, pies, cakes, and cookies. I loved it so much. When I was four, I began to, in my mothers own words, “demand a chance to assist in the process”. I figure that was her way of describing me yelling out ‘WANNA HELP” over and over again, getting progressively louder and, admittedly, more whiny as time went on (I was four, sue me) until my mother got fed up and sent me up to my room to play. She wasn’t angry, only frustrated. She loved that I wanted to be a part of this, but I really was too small. No, literally. Even with the step-stools we had at our disposal, I could not reach the top of the counter. So she sent me to my room to distract me from distracting her. And it worked. 

For about two years.

I went to school here.

When I was six, I started first grade at the public school half a mile down the street from my home. My dad walked with me the first couple of weeks, just to make sure I had the path memorized. By that time, I also had friends that I could meet up with at various points along the way, so he and mom felt more confident that I would be okay. I was short for my age, but was still growing, and I found that I was now tall enough to not only see over the counter, but actually work on it, with the help of the step-ladders. So, every day, when I got home from school, I would rush to finish my homework, and then hurry to the bakery to help mom. I learned so much there, and excelled in my science classes because of it. Baking is a science, after all. I can distinctly remember the feel of the dough in my hands as I molded it into its proper shape, the smell and feel of perfectly cooked crust, and the taste of the best pies in the world.

I left here.

I knew that I would someday. I wanted to bake on the world stage, not be stuck in this little country town my whole life. I…I said that to her. To my mom. I said I felt trapped here, that I was going to leave and make something of myself, and that once I did, once I escaped this town, I was never, never coming back. Her face was blank, then. I went to pack, and when I came back down to leave, I saw her crying in the kitchen. 

I left.

I didn’t cry until the train was already two hours away from the station and the weight of what I was doing and what I had done collapsed onto me. I should have turned around right then. I should have known that it would be weird for a bit, but that apologizes would happen and wounds would heal. But I was too scared, and maybe too proud. By the time I got to New York, my fear and pride and shame had turned to stubbornness. Even if I wanted to go back now, I can’t. I made too big a show of leaving. I’ll go back when I have something to show for it, and I will apologize for what I said and how I said it then.

I moved on.

I went to school and apprenticed to pastry chefs all over the country, and was eventually even offered a job in France. It wasn’t Paris, but it was perfect. I never really felt comfortable in those big cities anyway. I haven’t really thought about home in years. It exists in the back of my mind as a motivation without any real substance. Every so often, I felt a pang of sorrow, but I was just busy enough that it never lasted. Until one day.

I was walking down the sidewalk. I didn’t know why, but I felt like I needed to. I stopped when I picked up on a scent so familiar that it took my breath away. Even now, I can’t really explain what made this bakery different from the dozens I had been to and worked in. All I know is when I walked into that little bakery, where the scent of bread had found a home in every wall, every chair, every beam of wood in the building, I was transported, not just through space, but through time. I was four years old again, begging my mom to let me help her bake.

It felt so real that I thought I could almost hear it, and it took a moment for me to realize that it was not just in my head. I stole a glance into the kitchen.

Just as I had expected, the owner/baker was standing at the counter, kneading bread dough, while her little daughter (who could not have been more than four or five) had reached the whining stage of demanding to be able to help. I smiled, as the tears started to come. I knew what I had to do.

I came back.

As soon as I got back to my apartment, I resigned from my position and bought a plane ticket for the next day. I spent the rest of the day packing up everything that I needed from my apartment and on the way to the airport the next morning, I went to the bank to withdraw my savings and close my account. I wouldn’t be returning. I caught my 9AM flight with time to spare and landed in New York City eight hours later (11AM EST), and was back home at 5PM after a five hour train ride. I say all this to illustrate just how long my nerves, my guilt, my shame, and my anticipation were through the roof.

I decided to stay at a motel for the night, in an effort to calm down and get control of myself before surprising my parents the next day.

When I checked out the next morning, and left the motel, something felt off, but I ignored it. I was too excited to be home to realize that home…didn’t really look like home anymore. I couldn’t see it, but something in me felt it, and by the time I got to where my home stood and opened the (stuck?) door and entered the house the feeling of utter emptiness hit me like a freight train. It felt as if nobody had lived here for years. The smells were gone, the warmth was gone, the joy was gone. The home that I had been born in, grew up in, and eventually left in the worst way that I could have, seemed to have left me in turn. I should’ve known better than to think it would be what it was, that time would have essentially stopped for me. I had always been told that you can never go home again. I just never believed that statement would be so literal.

After some digging, I discovered that my parents had sold the property to their neighbor when they moved west. I contacted the neighbor and she was willing to sell me the property cheap. I purchased the property and spent the next night in the motel.

I stayed.

I started cleaning out the house and the bakery. It had been a while and they were both a mess. It took time, but in about eight months I was ready to open the bakery back up. I had learned some things in that time. I learned that the school I used to be able to walk to was gone since they had opened a, frankly, massive K-8 in the nearby city. The library that I used to frequent on my way home from school had moved a few miles away, but was bigger and held more materials. The bowling alley had expanded, and there was a new roller skating rink. It was also, just in general, bigger. This place that I had grown up in, that I could have walked blindfolded as a child, and described in perfect detail as an adult, had now changed to the point that I got lost regularly, especially in that first year. This place that should have been familiar to me, was now a stranger, and it took time to feel as though I belonged again.

I died.

In about five years time, the bakery was doing steady business and was once again a fixture in the community. I went to sleep one night, soon after the five year anniversary, woke up the next morning to get back to work, and didn’t realize until the bread was in the oven that I hadn’t actually woken up. 

Did you know that ghosts can fully interact with corporeal items if they carry strong enough feelings about them? No? Me neither until that morning. A brain aneurysm in my sleep, they said. Thirty-eight years old and I died in my sleep. When others found out, they expressed sadness, which is understandable enough. My feelings upon discovering that I had died in my sleep at thirty-eight were an interesting  mixture of frustration, embarrassment, and a bit of curiosity. Which I think is also fair. I mean, the fact that I was still there meant that I must be a ghost of some form or fashion, and the fact that I spent the morning baking must mean that I could still interact with objects. I thought back to that morning with my new knowledge and realized two things:

I didn’t feel the heat of the oven, and I can’t cut myself (or, at least, I can’t bleed).

I could still feel warmth, and I could smell the bread both in the oven and out. I could touch the bread, and feel the dough in my hands when I kneaded it, but I couldn’t seem to remember feeling the heat of the oven when I took the bread out. I went into the kitchen to test this conclusion. I had some bread ready to go, so I put that dough into one of the ovens at the regular temperature. I then turned the second oven up to full temp and waited. When the bread was done I opened that oven to take it out. The oven felt warm, but not hot and I was able to touch the loaf pan with my bare hands. I opened the other oven and had to close it immediately because the heat was so strong. I didn’t know why or how it worked, but it seemed as though when I was baking, opening the oven and removing the baked good felt as though I was wearing oven mitts, even though I wasn’t. This was good to know, and kind of exciting.

I thrived.

I started baking again that very instant and very soon noticed that I wasn’t getting tired. I know, I know, that should have been obvious. What can I say? I was distracted and not thinking. I filled all the cases with breads, cookies, cakes, and pies and opened that night. I had a plan. See, a lot of bakeries open in the morning and stay open until mid-afternoon. They figure that people are going to buy baked goods for breakfast or maybe lunch. And they’re usually right. But there are plenty of people still out at night, whether they want to be or have to be, and there is no reason that they wouldn’t be interested in buying. 

I brought seats and tables down from the attic. I was finding that, within my shop and my home, I could physically interact with more and more items, which made the next steps much easier. I created a seating area within the bakery, which proved very useful when the state college opened a new campus in the next city. My bakery was one of the few places open at night, and college students took full advantage of that. Business was better than it had ever been, and we are the only - ONLY - haunted bakery in the country actually run by a ghost.

Home never was the same when I came back, but it never is. You can either embrace the changes, or sink into despair pining for a world that just doesn’t exist anymore. Decades on the world still changes, but it changes around me, and I am no longer a stranger to it.