By Barbara
It’s taken years of bread making for me to get it right. I know not to add water that is too hot or too cool to the yeast. That “just right” spot feels intuitive now. I mix the dough with beaters until the density requires a wooden spoon turned by hand. I know the warm spots in the kitchen where the bread will rise best and then, when it’s swollen and ready to burst, I release it from the bowl and its cover to hand knead the whole ball – pushing away and pulling close, turning and dusting with bits of flour. Back and forth, under and over it goes. I fold the dough in, twisting and warming it with the movement of my hands, sensing when it’s the right consistency and ready to rise again.
Then a new pleasure consumes my kitchen. It’s the rising, yeasty scent, with the promise of its comforting taste to come, slathered with soft butter, dripping with honey or dotted with fruity goodness. It’s taken years to gain the ability for homemade bread to be a pleasure worth the time it takes.
I thought of my agility and years of accumulated blunders and eventual skills with bread making when my daughter recently said, in frustration, that she just can’t get the recipe to turn out right – my recipe, handed down to me from an aunt.
“They’re flat,” she says about her breads. “They burn on the bottom.”
I know she’ll experience disappointments and learn to tweak her process, refine her ingredients, be patient, move with the dough, anticipate its goodness, and trust her ability before the results please her.
Like sex.
I remember my first time. Is there anyone who doesn’t?
He bumbled and pulled and unbuttoned. I resisted and pushed away before releasing to my own urges beneath and beside him that night.
It hurt.
These are the two words I conjure to describe losing my virginity.
I’m pretty sure he lost his that winter night, too. He came too fast and hard and it was over before we really knew it happened. But his build up was released, whereas mine was just finding its course. The experience was as sensually pleasing as a piece of dry white Wonder bread topped with Velveeta cheese. There was nothing organic or artistic about the process or the result. I’m sure he would recall the evening differently.
At the time, I couldn’t have wrapped my head around being a woman in my fifties much less imagined that it would take me until this age to have the best sex of my life.
I believe we have to play our way through the blunders and awkwardness of early attempts. We have to use the right ingredients, or find the right lover.
I’ve read about sex and the female body. I’ve experimented with what pleases me. I’ve read about and explored the male body. I’ve learned to push and pull with what pleases my partner, too. I’ve learned to enjoy the play.
With lovemaking, we all start somewhere. We all have a “first.” If, as a woman, your first experience is with an older “wiser” man, then perhaps it is ecstatic and you know the benefit of being coaxed and schooled to an orgasm.
My first is a “burnt on the bottom” and “flat” memory.
I ask my daughter: “You know what I think is essential and often overlooked?”
She glances up at me from her iPhone.
“It’s the temperature of the water you add in the very beginning. Most people make it too hot and that kills the yeast. And too cold will lead to nothing. Tepid. It needs to be tepid.” And we experiment at the kitchen faucet so she knows what that feels like.
“It’s a little thing,” I tell her, “but it’s often the little things that make all the difference in the end.”
© Barbara
Barbara is a writer and photographer, currently freed from a house and its trappings, traveling the country in an RV, capturing beauty and nuances wherever the road leads. She blogs at The Empty Nest Mom about how full life is when the nest is empty; at Bring the Monkey about fiber arts and quilt shops she discovers in her travels, and she is a regular contributor at Vision and Verb; an international community of women.
Part 6 in a series on first sexual experiences.
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Absolutely brave, Barbara, and delightful, true and truthful, vulnerable and just, without shame or fear of exposure. BRAVA to you. And that was just the part about the bread-making. HA!
Seriously, this is brilliant…how you have woven these two marvels of human experience together!
I agree with you, @Ginnie. Brilliant.
Oh thank you so much, Ginnie. It was a pleasure to write – both the bread and the love.
lovelovelove!! Yes, you are so brave and speak your truth with all the right ingredients. So perfect the way you tied it all together, especially with your daughter’s “burnt on the bottom”. Really good job, my friend.
Thank you Susan – the “burnt on the bottom” was too choice not to pass up in this metaphor.
🙂
Ginnie took the words right out of my mouth. Brilliant…and beautiful…and sensitive and sensual…and very very brave. Bravo!
It takes courage to be vulnerable, doesn’t it Marcie? I thank Big Little Wolf for the opportunity to write on her beautiful site.
Who would have guessed how much making bread and making love can have in common, Barbara! 🙂 Great metaphor and soothing story of how some experiences may not be perfect but may be grown into. Thank you for your openness, it makes the story valuable.
So nice of you, Petra. Don’t you think that many times, it’s the sensual; whether the aromas, the feel, the tastes, our physical surroundings, or the sounds (as in music of outdoors in nature), that all tie together? They can all be savored. I think it’s why we bite into something delicious and close our eyes while holding it on our tongue for a moment. It can all be enjoyed and pleasing. And baking, for me, can be like that. As long as I have to knead and punch and roll…..may as well let my imagination run with it. 😉
Beautifully written! Thanks for your willingness to share, for the wisdom and truth. Loved reading this!
Thank you Deborah. It was actually very nice to write about something I hadn’t thought about for a long, long time. Certainly it’s a benchmark in our lives, isn’t it?
It’s brilliant how you tie these two together. And how brave of you (I know, I’m only repeating what has already been said…). It reminded me of my first time which was pretty much “burnt at the bottom” as well.
I wonder, Carola, how many of us had that kind of “first?”
Beautiful. What I’m noticing is how as we are aging our sex lives are blooming. Awesome.
It is awesome, isn’t it. Better late than never?
I loved it, Barbara. What a wonderful comparison – the time, the patience, the learning, and simply the practice to figure out what works best relate to both baking and sex.
I think you summed up the first time for most women perfectly : It hurt. Enough said, really. But then you had to add on awkward, and it was perfect, but the adjective stream kept coming and I kept nodding my head.
What a perfect non-graphic capturing of a collective experience. And you are right …. none of our firsts would have recognized “that night” in the description you gave.
Thank you for your comment Tammy. Glad the adjective stream resonated 😉
Better late than never, DA, and better now than ever.