My mother's raisin bread: COVID lessons from the 1950s.

 Following is the transcript from an audio essay on WUWM, the NPR affiliate in Milwaukee, WI, on Oct. 5, 2020. 

It wasn’t until late-September that I realized why, back in March, I was obsessed with making my mother’s oatmeal-raisin bread. It wasn’t the actual bread I craved. Rather, the bread was an attempt to create a safe, 1950s bubble. Just like my mother tried, more than half a century ago.

 

My mother's raisen bread recipe

I have spent much of my life rejecting the 1950s. But in this era of COVID-19, I am trying to understand that decade.

 

After I graduated from high school in 1969, I ran away as far and as fast as I could from all that the 1950s demanded of me: Behave. Conform. Strive no higher as a woman than nurse or teacher. Criticize but learn to co-exist with Jim Crow racism. And of course, don’t become one of those hippies protesting the Vietnam War. 

 

But COVID-19 has given me a fresh perspective on the 1950s — no, not the decade’s cultural, political and racial straightjackets, but its attempt to bury a painful past.

 

In the early weeks of COVID-19, I succumbed to the consumer frenzy that took hold across the country. I bought way too much toilet paper, Lysol, and hand-sanitizer. But when I tried to buy flour at Metro Market, the shelves were empty. I was in a near panic, saved only by over-priced, organic flour at another store.

 

I look back on those early weeks and laugh at my hoarding. But I don’t laugh when I think about the future. It is still too uncertain.

 

Mostly, I worry for my children, especially since they live more than a thousand miles away, and I don’t know when I will see them again. I want to magically conjure up a perfect world for them, just like my mother tried, more than half a century ago.

 

COVID-19 has given me a new admiration for my parents. They were both born in 1918, the year of the Spanish flu. At an age when they should have been planning their future, the country was in the grip of the Great Depression, followed by six years of a World War. They grew up surrounded by uncertainty, poverty, and death.

My parents rarely talked of those difficult years. Their focus was on the future. When that World War ended, and when it was clear the Great Depression would stay in the 1930s, all they wanted to do was create a wonderful bubble, a vaccine of sorts. They wanted a home, financial security, good schools for their children.

 

Looking back, it’s clear that the Civil Rights Movement was not only long overdue, but inevitable. African Americans, having fought and died for their country during World War 2, rightfully demanded their place in the American Dream.

 

In the initial months of COVID-19, I focused on getting through the summer. I now fantasize about a post-COVID future. And my dreams are not that different from those of my parents in the 1950s. I want my children and grandchildren to be healthy, to be safe, to have a future. And I want to make them oatmeal-raisin bread.

 

Looking at my mother’s recipe, I am struck by its simplicity. It has eight simple ingredients, with equally simple final instructions: “When lukewarm, combine all ingredients. Shape into three loaves.” There’s nothing about letting the bread rise, or how long it should bake. My mother knew that, give or take a bit, 375 degrees and 45 minutes was about right. 

 

Whenever I make my mother’s oatmeal-raisin bread, at some point I am transported back to my childhood. I can all but smell and see the warm bread, waiting on the kitchen table as I come home from school. My mom, knowing children pretty well—she had six—made sure we each had a small, individual loaf, baked in a used chicken-pot-pie tin.

I don’t know when the era of COVID-19 will end, any more than my mother knew when World War Two would end. But I long for the day when I can make oatmeal-raisin bread for my children and grandchildren, served fresh out of the oven. Like my mother did, in the 1950s.