On the notion of living happily ever after

An era comes to an end...A gift of love in the form of a psychic reprieve... and my best-ever recipe for bread

My landlords decided to sell the house in Kensington at just about the same time that I’d had it with running a boardinghouse. I was about to go on a little book tour with my mentor book. I found a 600-square-foot cottage in the Oakland Hills, set in the middle of a beautiful garden. I scraped together the first and last month’s rent and set about trying to empty out the house in Kensington, getting rid of all the furnishings except those things I really loved.

Kyle wept when I gave away the ratty old couch. He saw his whole life being dismantled, once again. I tried to convince him that we were going to have a nice life together in the little cottage—he could plant his own little garden and grow whatever he wanted there.

We all have too much stuff. But I had way too much stuff, seeing as how I had bought enough stuff to furnish a large house with five bedrooms. I worked and worked at sorting things out and giving things away. I had a garage sale, I moved what furniture I could to the cottage and I put some other stuff in storage. But, in the end, I wasn’t able to get the house cleaned out before I had to leave on the tour, and I never got the cleaning deposit back—which, under the circumstances, was a major bummer.

***

I’ve been trying hard to figure out what it means to live happily ever after. Stories never describe this—the film fades to black, so that we never really see how it’s done. We are only left with the mixed envy and awe that someone has managed to do it, even if we never have.

Do the prince and his princess start to bicker once they become king and queen? Does he turn away from her in their royal bed and feign sleep when she’d like to make love? Has she lost her pretty shape since producing an heir or two? Does he tell her to put on a sweater when she complains that the castle is cold? Is he so in the habit of going off to fight against dragons and ogres that he’s hardly ever at home? Does she feel the aching loneliness of the neglected wife?

I think I’ve finally figured it out—and it’s a good news/bad news sort of thing.

Let’s get the bad news over with first.

There is only one recipe for living happily ever after. Here it is:

1. Get very happy.

2. Die immediately.

Not to be morbid about it—but here’s the crux of the matter. The only “ever after” in this life is death. We get many chances to grasp at that bright brass ring of happiness—but there’s no such thing as living happily ever after. Happiness, like every other emotion, is transitory (which is an important thing to tell yourself when you’re feeling sad). Emotions come and go, depending on all sorts of factors, most of which occur completely outside the realm of our control. Weather, outside events, and the particular chemical balance of our internal soup on a given day can all contribute to throw us into a funk. Then something else happens—or shifts inside us—to cheer us up again.

Even those who are lucky and/or wise enough to hook up for life with the partner who is exactly right for them—only one of them can live happily ever after, unless they both jump off a cliff together. One of those happy, beautifully partnered people will eventually be left, grief-stricken and alone.

Apart from my life-long addiction to wishing and hoping, I had a lot of other things I needed to take care of when the boardinghouse era reached its end. I needed to figure out how to earn a living without surrendering the independence and freedom that allowed me to do my writing and be there for my son. I was determined to be the best mom I could be as he grew and got ready to launch himself into the world.

Photo by Johan Danielson on Unsplash

***

After my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and fully realized how ill she was, it was as if the wall we'd built between us magically crumbled.

Mom had been going through menopause while I was going through puberty. This deadly hormonal cocktail poisoned the well of a relationship already sabotaged by my family’s weird and, at that time, unfathomable dynamics. Even after I left home, we rarely had a phone conversation that wasn’t punctuated by ugly, sniping remarks, that didn’t end with one or both of us awash in angry tears.

And now, suddenly, all of that changed. We talked in the way she and my sister had always been able to talk. Mom seemed to be, for the first time, so interested in my life. I found myself turning to her, rather to my amazement, for advice, for perspective.

It wasn’t only because of her illness, although I’m sure that provided the opportunity for the dance between us to change. I’d finally managed on my own, in my fourth decade, to acquire the sense of being okay—of deserving to take up the space I occupy in the world and breathe the air I breathe. Once I had that, I was able to let go the stranglehold I had on my mom, trying to shake her down for what I knew I needed.

And now I could appreciate her in a way I was never able to before. I could see her courage and her sense of style. I could admire the easy grace with which she darted in and out of life’s murkiest waters, laughed readily and frequently, and was buoyed up by her fierce and irreverent sense of humor. And, yes, I saw the ways in which I am indeed her daughter.

In those final months of her life, my mother was able to tell me what I had been waiting and hoping my whole life long to hear from her: what a good daughter I was and how very much she loved me.

Hearing those words from her, and then talking to her almost every day and taking care of her at the end, I finally got to drink from that well we refer to as mother-love—and I was forever changed and strengthened by it.

Going home was always the hardest thing I had to do—for years and years because of the hurt I had to confront there; and then finally, at the end, because I was losing the mother I had always wanted.

***

This recipe—lost and found again, developed over decades of bread-baking—has a lovely story.

I knew my recipe, like a piece of music, by heart. But after living on a sailboat and in other situations for many years that didn’t allow for bread-baking—when I decided to make that bread again—the recipe eluded me. I could remember the ingredients but not how much of each to add or how long I used to let it rise—or at what temperature I baked it.

How could I forget something my hands and heart had known so well?

Long before the recipe was lost, while under contract to write a biography of the great food writer and prose stylist, MFK Fisher, I spent time in Cambridge, Massachusetts, digging in the archives of the Schlesinger Library. Katrina Kenison, the editor assigned to my project at Ticknor & Fields, invited me to stay at her lovely home during my week-long research sojourn.

Katrina has, since her days as an editor, become a much-beloved author. She and I bonded during my week in Cambridge in that special way afforded by a shared reverence for beautiful writing and food made with love.

MF had declared my old-world rye bread to be the best bread she’d ever eaten. Naturally enough, Katrina asked me for the recipe. I gladly gave it to her, hand-written on a sheet of illustrated stationery she kept in her kitchen.

Decades after I dropped out of the project (don’t ever agree to write a biography of someone who is still alive!)—after Ticknor & Fields blew up as an imprint of Houghton Mifflin, and my contract (rather to my relief) was declared null and void—I sent an email to Katrina, asking her if she’d consider giving me a jacket quote for what was to become my fourth novel, What Disappears.

All writers (including me) have their own strong feelings about giving or not giving blurbs. But what Katrina did do for me, much to my delight, was restore to me the recipe I thought I’d lost forever. She told me in her email that she’d just come across my recipe for old-world rye bread in her files.

I begged her to make a scan of it and send it to me.

And now I’ll share it with you, typed out (as the hand-written version is a little bit difficult to read). My original recipe, as it was when I wrote it out for Katrina, is depicted below. You’ll see that I’ve made a couple of adjustments to it—and that the recipe in manuscript bears my maiden name.

Happy 70th Birthday to me!

Old World Rye Bread
Copyright ©️ 2024 by Barbara Quick
 
Please read the recipe through before you start.

Heat 2 cups buttermilk until quite hot but not boiling.

Stir in:
1/4 cup each, honey and dark molasses
1 T salt
1/2 tsp dill weed
2 T caraway seeds
2 T white sesame seeds

When the mixture cools down to body temperature (right for a baby's bath),
use a whisk to add 4 tsp yeast.

Let sit, covered, in a warm place until the mixture bubbles.

You can make the recipe up to this point before you go to bed--and then finish it the next day. If you're letting the mixture sit overnight, you can leave it at room temperature. Time will be doing the work (rather then heat).

Add about 2 cups of rye flour. Stir vigorously, about 100 strokes.

Add about 3-1/2 cups of whole wheat flour until the texture is right for kneading (not too dry but not too sticky). Knead on a lightly floured surface for about 10 minutes.

Set in a warm place and let rise, covered with something more or less airtight plus a cloth that's bigger than the opening of your bread-bowl, for 1-1/2 hours.

Punch down, divide in two, and form each piece into a mound with the seams tucked underneath as much as possible. (I described that process in the poem I posted here last week... I'll make a video of the whole recipe if anyone would like more clarification.)

Place the two mounds, with generous space between them, on a baking sheet sprinkled with rough cornmeal. Cover with the same things you used before. Allow the loaves to rise in a warm place for one hour.

While the loaves are rising, place a pizza stone in your oven. Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

Use a sharp knife to make 1/8-inch parallel slashes across the top of the bread. Just before you put the baking sheet in the oven (on top of the pre-heated pizza stone), spray the loaves all over with a fine mist of water. Put a pie tin filled with ice cubes on the shelf below or the bottom of the oven to make extra steam. This is what makes a good crust.

After about 20 minutes, take the baking sheet out and quickly lift the loaves onto the pizza stone. (If it seems like they're going to fall apart, give them a little more time to bake before you move them.) Spray with water again.

Bake for another half hour or so, quickly spraying water on the loaves once or twice more.

You want to make sure the bread is really baked all the way through. The internal temperature should reach 194 degrees Fahrenheit. The crust should be nice and hard (but not burned, of course).

Have a cooling rack ready to receive your fresh-baked loaves. Resist slicing the bread until it's cooled down. Go outside and come in again to fully appreciate the smell of this bread.

If you've loved one of my novels but haven't sprinkled stars or written a review for it yet on Amazon (or GoodReads, B&N or somewhere else), please do so! Every five-star review increases the chances for earning a win for my next novel in today's crazily competitive literary lottery. Same goes for my little book of poetry. Note to any of you who don't know this already: When you're buying the work of someone who is still alive, buy a new copy (not a used one). A writer gets no royalties on used books. Even if you have no money at all in your budget for buying books, you can support your favorite living writers by requesting their work from you local library.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for reading my SubStack! Please keep your fingers crossed for my new novel and join me in celebrating my new literary agent, Anne-Lise Spitzer, formerly Vice President and Director of Marketing at Knopf, Pantheon, and Schocken Books and President now of the Philip G. Spitzer Literary Agency.

The story isn't over yet! There's more to come next week. ❤️