I made some sweet rolls today.

And that’s not much, I guess. Not when compared to the people who come home from their work and write something on their blog, respectively, that sounds more like I made a rocket ship today or I danced for the President today or even I invented that break-away pump thing at gas stations that keeps those tube things from breaking when the driver accidentally drives away because they’re probably spending their thoughts on more romantic notions than gas tube things and how they really should be stowed properly, people!! Although if the guy who invented one of those things was doing the writing, he’d probably sound a lot more sophisticated than that. Tall order, I know, cause does it even get any more sophisticated than the word thing used over and over again ?

But still, making the dough–that’s something. Something that I might have even needed. And I would even argue that it’s one of the productive ways in which we can use our hands, though I am not sure that it made The List that my friend likes to mention every so often. He has a picture on his phone of two people giving each other an exuberant high-five (which is how a high-five should be given, I’d guess), which is just one of the ways listed in this book that I suppose he’s read that reminds us of the good things we can do with our hands.

And kneading dough is definitely one of  them, if you ask me.

It’s all this work and digging in and don’t be shy because, honey, this is gonna be messy and you’ll be picking dough out from under your fingernails for at least a minute, but that’s just it: you make it work. Until it suddenly doesn’t feel like work at all. Not anymore.

And the thing is, you were ready for all that work. The effort. The feeling like this is just plain hard. But really, when you take some inventory, you find out that it’s not so difficult after all; that it’s fun. That you’d rather this kind of work that could result in maybe the best bread you’ve had in a long time than any other.

Cause the work you had been doing turned out to be a production. And you didn’t know it, but other people were acting while you were doing what’s called living and that’s maybe the worst kind of production of all.

And I don’t know when this changed from making bread into talking about life, but it did, and I am in awe. And okay, the sweet rolls were quite delicious, but more than anything else, I am in awe of what May looks like. How it tastes on my tongue. How it feels, like I don’t want to pull back from its touch the way I thought I would, had you asked me almost six months ago to the day.

And I was ready for life to hurt for a very long time. What I wasn’t ready for was this. A feeling that life is good. That it’s meant for the living and, God, but I am glad! glad! glad! to be among them. That I wouldn’t want to miss the way God seems to hold a cup of stars and every once in a while accidentally spills the whole thing out into the night sky until it’s brighter than it is dark. How people are the most fascinating creatures and I can understand why God is so taken with us, I think.

How this is a story that I don’t want to abandon and, as it turns out, I care about very deeply, indeed.

And baking bread is just a small part of this story, but it was something and something counts for, well, something. Something that I liked very much, which was partly the point, I think.