Breaking Bread, Jerusalem Tamire

BREAKING BREAD

Jerusalem Tamire

My earliest memory of home is of me and my cousins stuffing warm cups of tea with freshly baked bread. We’d eat it like custard. Sugar filled smiles.

Ababa taught me a lesson one Easter morning. “Holidays are different, food takes longer to cook, family longer to gather. Go and bring two mirindas and a basket of bread. You and I will have a feast of our own.”

Family gathered in prayer before dinner.

Mom baking bread in a foreign country, her methods—a compromise to tradition—but tradition all the same.

Celebration, grief, gathering, guests made their way carrying bread, large and covered in handsewn knit covers.

Coffee brewing, laughter and the midday news served with homemade bread, Ethiopian bread.

Tomorrow I will bake, tomorrow we will gather, tomorrow we will continue tradition.

Tomorrow we will bake bread.

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