A Year of Gratitude – March 17, 2024

My gratitude was baked up in a loaf of bread today. That’s not unusual for me. I love to bake bread for my family. While my baking schedule has ebbed and flowed during my adult years, I am back to baking fresh bread for my family once or twice a week depending on our menu plans.

My mom baked us a loaf of delicious Irish soda bread today for St. Patrick’s Day. It was the loveliest sort of surprise. We snacked on it this afternoon. Warm slices of bread slathered with Irish butter made for a wonderful way to spend time together while gathered around the kitchen table.

I am usually the bread baker in the family. It’s a role I love, so I don’t mind at all. I enjoy the rhythm of bread baking, the ritual of it. While it can be pushed a bit this way or that, it requires a certain measure of patience. Some days I need that reminder, to be patient.

Bread baking gives me that sort of reminder and produces something my family can enjoy. To see the happy looks on my children’s faces when they have a warm slice at our dinner table or toasted for breakfast is all the reward I need to keep me wanting to bake the next loaf of bread.

Today, I got to be on the receiving end of the homemade loaf. It’s not a place I normally find myself. It reminded me of my childhood and the loaves of bread my grandmother baked to share with us. Fridays were bread baking days which meant that Saturday morning found me making toast out of thick slices of homemade bread.

I still love to begin my days with a slice of toast, especially with homemade bread. I find it to be comforting. It doesn’t hurt that Penny Lane is always nearby waiting, sometimes impatiently, for the last bite. She knows me and my toast habits well. The last bite is always hers.

Today’s Irish soda bread was a reminder of how good it feels to have someone bake bread for you. I hadn’t forgotten the feeling, but I hadn’t connected to it in a while. It felt nice to reconnect to those childhood memories through an act of kindness from my mom. Sitting at the table enjoying that bread with my children was like pulling a piece of thread to stitch together a fond memory from my childhood to today. It wasn’t lost on me that it connected my grandmother, mother, me, and my children in a way that was beautiful.

So here’s to baking things, bread or other, and sharing them with people you love. By doing so, you help to stitch together the memories of past and present. Or, you can make new memories, new traditions together. I can tell you from experience that they are the sort of memories that will last a lifetime.

This post is part of our A Year of Gratitude Series. You can find the introduction, inspiration, and entire year’s gratitude’s posts here.