On Bread, Cast Iron, and a French Syllabus

It seems like there should be some sort of logical connection between the bread I baked this morning, the size 6 cast iron pan I salvaged from great-granny's garbage pile, and the French syllabus I worked on today in preparation for spring quarter starting next Monday. I accomplished all three projects at the same time today, moving from bread sponge to steel-wool-scrubbing of the pan, to mapping out what my students will be learning in the two chapters we'll cover, and back to bread or the pan, or the computer, until all three are now all done.

I guess that I like having these three lumped together because of what they represent for me: loaves of bread lovingly kneaded, ready for butter and jam snacks after school and sandwiches in tomorrow's lunches; a cast iron pan from our beloved 95-year old farm wife granny, who woke up every day at 5 and went to bed well past dark her entire life, working in the kitchen and the garden and making memories shared by all her grandchildren and great-grandchildren; and a French syllabus, my return to teaching at the college level now that my kids are in school, putting my own many years of schooling back to work, doing something outside the home but that is also as satisfying as making bread or preserving a pan. Baking, family, and education. They all weave together, they're all part of who I am now: a web woven of working toward learning who I am and what I'm meant to do in life, criss-crossed through all the spaces at home, with little forays out to connect with young people dipping their toes into another language.