starving men

There was once a man named Gerard. He wore a beret everyday on his morning walk around the neighborhood. He had his routine and nothing, not even rain would stop him. He'd come back home after stopping by Mrs. Kimberly's yard to look at the roses she sweetly tended to. After picking up his newspaper, he'd start to roll the rubber-band off even before he reached his door. He'd open his fridge, grab his OJ and eat his freshly baked bread. Mr. Gerard paid great attention to the craft of bread-making.

There was once another man named Andrews. Yes, with an "s" on the end of his name. He was laid back and lived a simple down to earth kind of life. He'd be the man you'd see in the bookstore engrossed in a novel on a cloudy day with no care in the world. You'd catch yourself watching him with such intrigue and wondering why you can't be as carefree and engrossed in your reading as he is. He would wake up each morning and grab a coffee at the book shop, tipping the barista .50 each day. He believed that .50 each day was more consistent than a dollar occasionally. A barista favors consistency over occasional kindness he thought. Similar to Gerard, Andrews too made bread from scratch. Saturday was his bread making day and Sunday was his day to reap what he sowed.

The economy was starting to fall each day. Yet, Gerard scraped as much money to get his newspaper coming daily and Andrews still tipped that barista. Gerard tips his hat off to me in the morning right before his walk as I am leaving for work and as Andrews is walking home with a book practically still glued to his face, he peers over the brim of his literature to acknowledge me.

Unfortunately a terrible windstorm destroyed our neighborhood one day, taking all that we were used to seeing, our routines and scrambled it all up. Some lost their houses or parts of it. Gerard and Andrews decided to bake bread for the neighbors in order to help out. Now, they each had a different way to make bread. Gerard learned from his father's bakery when he was a child helping out dad at the store and Andrews picked up bread making by trial and error. He found solace in bread making when his grandmother passed away. She loved baking and she said bread was suitable for the family. It takes work to make it with extra care but it fills everyone bellies, is shared and doesn't need embellishment.

Anyways I digress, as you can see with such different ways to bread making, Gerard and Andrews did not get started on making bread as soon as they had hoped. They argued in and out about who's way was right and better. "Well in my experience, this never worked..." "My father served 45 years as a bread maker and was successful"..."you have to do it this certain way"...all this was battled back and forth as families started to run out of places to search for food mainly because the food shelter was running short on food items. The two men continued to battle and waste more baking materials in their attempts to win each other over with whose way was better. Gerard and Andrews found themselves becoming bitter men.

Two men at each the end of the table,
with hollow faces and slowly becoming hollow hearts,
darken over differences,
that could be made right.

Food for the stomach,
become their gods,
ways of routine,
are daily mantras.

Desire to be right,
eating up their lives,
when hollowness could be filled.

In the end,
bones are left at each end of the table
as bags upon bags of flour and yeast
are left untouched.

I exaggerate slightly in this story. I'm not even sure why I wanted to jot this down. I guess it's just to say that I believe
Gerard and Andrews exist in all of us in some form or fashion. However, I am going to learn how to make bread and how to share it even if with bitter angry old men who just squabble over who's right or wrong...maybe they'll grow silent when chewing the bread and end up laughing over their silliness, over the pointless arguments of details that grow smaller by the minute as bellies are full and bread is being passed around the table.

Love,
C