The Smell of Burning Bread I’m not sure just what kind of self-conscious memories I’m trying to obliterate, being as I’m not all that sure what even happened all those years of time. It is difficult to write clearly about a childhood I have never left; one which I may never even have experienced in the first place. There are so many different versions of what counts as true. I want to pick one long sinew of memory and follow it cat’s cradle style to the next.
I was born in a hospital to parents who may or may not have wanted me, exactly, though no parents ever really want the particular children that come out, grab-bag style, and sometimes the idea of a sort of communistic town square where one could trade babies back and forth does have its appeal. At least that way there might be a chance of children’s temperaments being suited to their parents. I am stalling of course.
My mom’s kitchen smelled like plastic and old play-dough and things that had long since finished being cooked…crumbs of stuff dropping into the heating element of the toaster oven. She used to make beer bread in it and the top would always come out blackened and the inside raw and sickish beery pasty but she would never make it in the regular oven because she thought it was a waste of electricity to heat the whole oven for that one little loaf of bread.  ¶ 10:47 AM