(35) Nancy Jorgensen: Decisions
Cookbooks overrun my kitchen table, spines cracked to buns and brioche. Spots of greasy butter and yellowed milk gather among the words. Which recipe should I make? A healthy oat bread? A practical sandwich loaf? Or a decadent buttered-and-sugared cinnamon roll, rivers of icing trickling its folds. Just as I tuck my finger under the creased corner of a page and circle it to the opposite side, my daughter Gwen FaceTimes. Once again, she says, “I really want you, Dad, Elizabeth, and me to live within twenty minutes of each other.” The problem is that Gwen, a professional runner, needs a more temperate climate than ours, and she lives a thousand miles southwest. “If everyone moved to Colorado,” she says, “we could all be together.”
I consider the trade-offs if we left our Wisconsin hometown of sixty-some years. Gliding on two wheels over the Glacial Drumlin Trail would be exchanged for booted treks on a snow-capped mountain. Playing piano accompaniments for my trumpeter friends would be replaced by Wednesday-night dinners with our daughters. Morning chats with my aging mother would be swapped for bedtime stories with my four-year-old grandson, my nose thrumming with the scent of baby shampoo, then a tuck-tuck of cotton sheets, and a whisper of lips on his forehead. The options swing like a pendulum, forward and back in two equal arcs—driving a clock that won’t tick forever.
When Gwen says goodbye, I imagine yeasty loaves, hot with melted butter, shared every week with my daughters. But, I need a loaf today, so it’s back to my breadboard. Perhaps the push and pull of creating something strong, yet delicate, will lead me to an answer. What should today’s bread be? Maybe sourdough, fed and tended, then shaped and warmed until it rises up beautiful and brown. Or rolls, each with a style, shape, and look of their own. Perhaps multigrain, the nutty and sweet, the colorful and nourishing, all in a single loaf. I settle on challah, rich with egg and sweet with honey. My fingers fashion four strands, smooth, but never perfect or exactly the same, to plait into a golden braid.
Nancy Jorgensen is a Wisconsin writer. Her memoir, Go, Gwen, Go: A Family's Journey to Olympic Gold, is co-authored with daughter Elizabeth Jorgensen and published by Meyer & Meyer Sport. Her choral education books are published by Hal Leonard Corporation and Heritage Music Press. Other works appear at Prime Number Magazine, River Teeth, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, CHEAP POP, Brevity, and elsewhere.
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