Hands in Flour

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Words & Photography
by Melissa Cunningham



I bake for control.

When I was a girl, I had this deeply ingrained vision of my future life: knee deep in winter snow on the prairie (or maybe the enclosed forests of New England), carrying fresh cut logs to a small house with glowing windows, nothing new inside, a coal-black iron stove and fresh bread rising in it. I may have read one too many Laura Ingalls Wilder or American Girl books, but the image made its way into my subconscious.

Baking is this calm, level-headed action. I often scoop or pour into my hands because I can estimate with a fist or a cupped palm. Or I know the consistency I’m looking for. Kneading bread bare-handed is a seven minute window wherein nothing-else-matters. Closed eyes. Dough evolving under my fingers from a shaggy, uncontrollable mess into a tight form of possibility.

Break apart that description, and you don’t have to go much further to understand why I keep baking.


Baking is this calm, level-headed action. I often scoop or pour into my hands because I can estimate with a fist or a cupped palm.
Every day something falls apart: a plan, a perception, a hope. We have so many choices in these moments. Throw the metaphorical hands into the air and quit, or roll the sleeves up higher and dig in deeper to some part of life that matters.

I feel a lot. This is an understatement. When I was younger I think I let it get the best of me: the highs and the lows. Feeling connected, then those connections breaking. My defense was to wall up parts of myself with too much feeling. Drop off all expectations.



With a bit of age and a heap of experiences, I’ve learned to push into practices that reconnect me with life and self. It takes a lot to get past those walls, but I never want to be OK with losing hope, losing self, or giving up.

Working with my hands, feeling life, creating a new form: each is a builder of connections with life in the present.

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