It’s 4:32 a.m. and I am lying in bed thinking about bread. I
want to get up and have a piece of my mother’s nut bread, the one she made only
at Thanksgiving, but I would have to rattle around in the kitchen for the scrap
of recipe and ingredients. The dog, sleeping at our feet (yes, we’re one of the
millions who let them on the bed) would want to get up and go out and bark at
the neighbor’s cat, which would wake the husband . . . so I stare at the
ceiling and try to remember other favorite foods of Thanksgivings past.
Bread again. This time it’s Bunny bread stuffing. I can’t
even remember the last time I ate a piece of soft, white, gluey bread. My mom
would rip up several loaves into little pieces and let them dry out overnight.
I don’t know what else she did to it, but that stuffing was arguably the best
part of the meal, next to the cranberries.
Shadowy light comes in slits through the blinds. I give up
and slip out of bed. The dog gets up too.
“Can’t sleep?” my husband murmurs.
“My head’s full of
thoughts,” I say.
