Epiphany one: bread does not show up by itself. This may seem obvious to some of you. Nonetheless, I've been testing for months now and I'm ready to publish the results. If you don't make bread, you don't have bread. I am getting really tired of biscuits and scones and quick breads. Our daily bread has been quick this year. We start the day with something hot, fresh, and fast. We have not had toast or PB&J in ages. I'm craving grilled cheese. Not to mention, some kind of bread that hangs around the kitchen feeding people more than 10 minutes.

After washing lentils and starting them to simmer for dinner. And after setting out white beans to soak for tomorrow, I relented. I decided to make slicing bread. You know, bread with yeast. Slow bread. So I opened a stick of butter, pulled out the small pot we use to melt such, and turned to my fresh goat's milk.

Epiphany two: we scald fresh milk to kill the lactobacillus and enzymes which might, otherwise, inhibit our yeast. This has been done since yeast bread showed up. Its an ancient edict. If you make bread, you know you are supposed to scald the milk. Every recipe says so. Of course, with pasteurisation, this becomes redundant. But AH HA! Does this not prove the difference between raw and pasteurised? Is it not right there, written into all the recipes from all the Great Grandmothers, since before the guv'ment got interested in our milk? I do believe it is. But this is a digression from my point.

Bread does not show up unless you make it. It never walks in the door by itself. This sort of behavior simply is not in the nature of bread. I kept thinking about this while I kneaded. I had several long minutes to think, in fact. I was suddenly reminded of very wise words Fourmother once spoke, "It was like watching someone drown in knee deep water. No matter what anyone told her, she never saw that all she had to do was stand up."

Do you love that? I could list many women without even pausing to think, who appear committed to drowning themselves in shallow water. Much in the same way I've been waiting for bread to appear, of its own accord, in my kitchen. People who refuse to stand up. They don't want to hear about standing up. They don't want to think about standing up. Apparently, they like living face down in the water. However, they can't like it all that much, because we sure do hear a lot about how awful their lives are. There sure is a lot of splashing and flailing - complaining, even. Ever notice how much effort folks will put into their own failure?

Someone's therapist said anther thing I just adore. I want a poster. Are you ready? Steel yourself, because its a whopper of a notion. I've warned you. Here it is. "Every moment of self-pity is an admission that you have no intention of changing."

Please, all of you, stand and clap. I am standing and clapping. I could also admit, right here, that I stood in the dark in our bathroom last night, holding a beer and quietly sobbing. I am not immune to sorrow, even for my self. Still, I am deliciously shattered by this truth. It thrills me.

Because its true. Grow up. Make your bread. Get on with it.

While I was kneading today, I began to wonder why humans seem so committed to flailing and crying about the bread that, never the less, refuses to appear spontaneously. The answer did not walk in the door and announce itself. But one idea sparked. We certainly raise our children in institutions which begin by pushing them face down into knee deep water and ordering them to fight their way out. And we certainly do hold them there for THIRTEEN LONG YEARS. If we wanted to design a program to institutionalize this one compulsion, we succeeded.

We teach children in school, every day, to ignore their own intuition, authority, and the noble and deeply profound truth that humans were born to learn. If we don't need to hold humans down to teach them, what else can the children infer, except that they are expected to flail and fight for an elusive and odd dependence. And this dependence does not seem to work very well. Does it? It is almost like waiting for the bread to make itself.