Baking Bread with My Daughter

I have been part of a wonderful women's group for the last two years....Women in the Spirit. This year we journeyed together reading a book "Breaking Free...Women of Spirit at Midlife and Beyond", which at my age seems appropriate. This group of women is busy mothering, grandmothering, working with ministries at different levels and so we were each to draw from a "hat" a chapter to read and present to our group.....a synopsis....and how that chapter spoke to us as individuals. I was not present at the meeting, so my chapter was assigned in January. I read the chapter and protested that this was not the one for me.....perhaps something with more meaning, something more spiritual that would challenge me......but the answer was no. It seems no one else had traded and so I was to keep this chapter.....I wrote on this last night and presented it today.................

Baking Bread with My Daughter
By Kathleen Dean Moore p. 42


During one of her visits to Minnesota, Kathleen Moore watched, as her daughter kneaded dough for bread in her cabin kitchen. Her daughter suffered from fibromyalgia and the doctor told her “to move even if it hurts, this is the way, you get well. Healing takes time. Let it hurt, but gently” she was instructed. Kathleen watched the daughter turn the bread under her hands and push against it with her fists. A rough and heavy dough filled with sesame seeds, wheat berries, and rye seeds. It will make good, thick, nutritious bread. Kathleen thought “This pain has no logic. It makes no sense…the only fact is pain.” The daughter continued to work with the dough turning it over on itself and folded over the folding. The expanding dough resisted the turning,pulled away from her fists. The dough had ideas. She pushed it against the side of the bowl. As she kneaded, her face began to relax. Kathleen watched her woman-child, and, as a mother, it was hard for her to see her child bear up. Kathleen cried in the kitchen and was ashamed.
The pain in her was the pain in her daughter.

“What I need from you,” the daughter said, “is for you to sprinkle cornmeal on the baking pan,” giving our author something to do. So Kathleen did. ……the loaves were on the shelf under a tea towel now. They couldn’t be put in the oven because it was too hot…..they would harden the loaves before they finish rising. So gently now. Not too much heat. Kathleen writes, “I am trying to learn this. Believe me, I am trying. There will be time for more logs in the firebox. There will be time for an oven heated to 400 degrees. We come away and let it rest. Sometimes patience is as good as hope,” she writes.

There have been many times I have baked, cooked, laughed, and cried in the kitchen with my daughters. But what this story talked to me about was not the kitchen and the memories it holds for me and my daughters but the one occasion I spent with my second daughter, Rita. Her kitchen was the neonatal unit in Dallas…..her dough was our granddaughter. Her fifth child, the one pregnancy she couldn’t wrap her head around when she came crying into my bathroom one day in June 2010 to tell me she was pregnant again.

I left her on Tuesday in October during a quick weekend visit, she looked well. We had taken the kids to the park, lunch and then the pumpkin patch to pick out great Halloween carvers. Her husband had gone fishing with mine and all was good. By Wednesday afternoon, Rita sensed there was something not right with the baby …. noticing less and less movement from the baby. They weren't the vigorous karate kicks that she liked to feel. No, her activities were more like little gentle flutters. Rita decided to go in to see her OB. Praise God that she did. The baby’s growth rate had gone from 88% to 3% in 8 weeks. Her amniotic fluid level was at a 5.5. Rita was checked into the hospital immediately and put on a fetal monitor to watch baby's heart rate and activity level. On Friday morning, she visited the perinatologist again and he did a level 2 sonogram again. This time, after being on bed rest since Wednesday and eating/drinking plenty, the amniotic fluid was now at a 2. Baby needed to come out immediately. Rita was wheeled right down to Labor and Delivery, and prepped for a c-section.

On Friday, October 15, 2010, Marianne Katherine Rose Rossini was born, a 28 week preemie, 1 lb 12 oz. The miracle we beheld that weekend was absolutely perfect in every way. She had 10 fingers and fingernails, 10 toes and toenails, brown hair and a pointy chin..…..she had our hearts. Marianne was breathing on her own with a continuous positive airway pressure mask over her nose. But she required her oven; she needed to be hooked up to wires that read her heart beats, her oxygen levels, temperature, respiration, milk intake and her eyes were bandaged. She wasn’t ready and I watched my daughter change Marianne’s diaper, hook up 1 mm of milk at a time into the feeding tube going into her mouth, and then gently caress the baby… I watched this woman-child, and as a mother it was hard for me to see her bear up.... Where did she get her faith? Where did she get her strength? She sang to little Marianne "Hosanna! Blessed be the ROCK and may the GOD of my salvation be exalted! Hosanna...!" I knew the answer…… and I cried.

So Rita said….what I need from you, mom …. And I did…..we stayed as long as we could, helped with what was required. We took the other four children, sometimes three, sometimes four at a time and brought them home. Giving Rita and Gino some opportunity to spend all the time they needed at the hospital with this precious bundle. We could love the others and care for them either in Dallas or in San Antonio. Rita pumped breast milk and took it up to the hospital everyday, what they didn’t need at the hospital was frozen until needed.

The Lord has truly kept us and He continued to watch over our Marianne as she grew in her "outside womb"/her oven. This was an amazing time because we witnessed her awesome growth. She is fearfully and wonderfully made. PRAISE GOD. Marianne was in the hospital four and a half months.

Sometimes patience is as good as hope.

Now I face yet another situation in the kitchen as my oldest daughter, Gina, was admitted into the hospital on Monday. She is 30 weeks into her pregnancy and will not be released until number four arrives tomorrow or next week or 4 weeks from now. Another kitchen, another oven……we sit and wait. We pray that God will keep us open to His will, His plan. Yet the uncertainty makes us speak aloud as our author said “This pain has no logic. It makes no sense…the only fact is pain.”

We ponder God’s timing and know that He does have a plan. Joseph Campbell said “We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”

I hang on to a prayer my friend Laurie sent me…….We humbly ask that your loving, Healing hand is on Gina and her baby. YOU, the Creator of all can restore and heal all that is needed in order for Gina and baby to be ok and healthy. We trust you Lord that YOU are with Gina and child and that your Holy Spirit will fall upon her and grant her comfort, and peace. We ask that YOU work through all the doctors that are in charge of her care and that you direct them as they make medical decisions. We thank you Lord that you hear our prayers and that your eyes are on Gina and You are holding her and baby in the palm of YOUR hand. We love You Lord Jesus. Amen!

Sometimes patience is as good as hope.