I’m not forty yet but I have been coming up with more stories to tell my kids which makes me think I’m edging in on old. I could’ve sworn I couldn’t remember that much from childhood.
When we walked in the school building this morning, it smelled like warm, delicious hot rolls. We enter through the cafeteria side. I mused aloud that a sweet woman named Carmen used to make all the hot rolls, cinnamon rolls, breadsticks at our school.
I can still remember the taste, even down to the tray, the crusty bits of flaking cinnamon and icing, the buttery garlic of the massive soft breadsticks that were nothing more than elongated hot rolls. How lucky I was to eat in her cafeteria for thirteen years of my childhood! No roll, cinnamon or otherwise, fit squarely in any of the small side dish compartments. The breadsticks—only breadsticks in name—are still a revelation in my mind; fluffy, mouthwatering and golden on top. They always came in pairs, stuck together, as only a pizza wheel had separated the dough prior to rising. Picture two full-size hotdog buns without rounded edges—this breadstick masterpiece was easily the size of the art boxes we kept in our desk. I think I survived on Carmen’s dependable bread through elementary, middle, and high school—and especially on those meager lunch days that boasted Salisbury steak or other vague meat choices.
Opaa!, our out-sourced lunch plan du jour, even with its spunky exclamation point cannot hold a candle next to the meals I grew up on (nixing the beanie weenies, of course).
What’s even more shocking is that Carmen taught me her magic for three years straight. I wasn’t paying full attention—it was 4-H Yeast Breads I, II, and III and I killed my fair share of yeast with hot water out of Carmen’s microwave. I was far more concerned with the weight of disappointing a grown up than watching a master at work.
My mom would pack yeast and a five pound sack of flour in a paper bag for me to store in my locker during the school day. In the afternoon, Carmen would take us to her house to pull out stained recipe books and try our hand at the trade. I remember the heavy responsibly of not killing yeast so as not to disappoint Carmen nor my mom who had paid for it. Carmen would cluck and tsk and try to help fix our (usually un- fixable) mistakes.
(Why didn’t we ask for Carmen’s trustiest recipe? Why did we, week after week, flip through the same recipe book in search of something lighter, fluffier, tastier—when Carmen herself had all the secrets?)
We—my oldest brother and me—would inevitably bring home rock-like lumps of “cranberry wreaths” and “peanut butter bears”—only the fanciest, most complicated delicacies—for our mom to pretend to fawn over and declare, mouth full, “delicious”. Our Parker House/butter fan/knots/pretzels/Sally Lunn—they were all dense and nearly burned on the bottom. No fear, in a couple weeks we would repeat our attempts!
This is what floors me, if I am being honest, about school, and about communities. Good ones persistently seek small victories in small spaces, never looking up to see who is watching.
Carmen, the idol of my youth, was a lunch lady. I looked up to several grownups in my life and none of them probably ever made much more than minimum wage. Yet I used my yeast bread knowledge to secure my first real adult job at the age of twenty, walking into a commercial kitchen and offering to make pizza dough, from scratch, for lunch. Within a year I was managing the place.
Another grownup I loved was a teacher who sang as we marched through the elementary hallways. She smiled constantly, beamed really, at her students, like we had made the sun rise that morning. No lesson was too small. We studied ugly little pollywogs, stanky, murky water in a dirty aquarium. We touched milkweed and watched butterflies be born.
I remember the centers in her classroom. Centers! How in the world did she make first grade interesting enough to be remembered, down to the 4 major food groups (we spread peanut butter on bread cut out into teddy bear shapes)? I love her to this day for loving me.
And now I spend my evenings brainstorming up fun little ways to make my classroom engaging and memorable—digging out an old pair of tap shoes to show the students tomorrow along with a clip of Gene Kelly and Singin’ in the Rain.
The things that seem undoable to the general crowd, like changing the world or molding the future: I learned it from sweet ladies who were genuinely just trying to make the next day’s batch of food or lesson plan for hungry kids who didn’t appreciate what they had until they’d left the nest.
That’s really how simple it is—a willingness to get messy coupled with some deeper satisfaction that doesn’t come from recognition, but a determination to live nobly.
