Like a freshly baked bread

I’ve decided to show up here again and resume my wanderings. It seems like yesterday when I posted my last entrance and it feels like 3 years have passed in 7 months.

Since then, delicioso and beautiful love came into my life, I have visited a couple of countries I never thought I could visit, Southeast Asia almost feels like home —or maybe I’m exaggerating—, I started to materialize a dream and I’m still discovering myself. Yes, yes, nothing so new.

A couple of days ago, that time in my life came to my mind: when I was helping my parents with the purest and most genuine innocence in the bakery that, at that time, we built as a family. And yes, as usual, I cannot stop looking for metaphors to talk about what this journey called life has meant for me in this year and four months in this country.

Remembering the purity of the beginnings, deciphering the reason for your decisions and precisely going back to specify the feeling and look for its semblance with the intensity of the present, is something that does not happen to me with much recurrence. But here I am and yes, because it is happening.

I always witnessed the process of displaying the hot bread in the showcase display, or what the smell of freshly baked bread did to the walkers or passengers who passed by and could not avoid to stop to buy what the smell had already sold and fed.

Dad with his little notebook of calculations, seeing how many sacks of wheat flour were needed to bake a certain number of loaves a day, the yeast that had to be used, the sugar, the salt, the machines and their operation, the suppliers to contact and all the synergy and planning necessary with the baker to produce the product that had required so much effort. It was a sumptuous job, but it was also quite a lot of work.

I used to sneak upstairs to watch the magic happen. Now that I remember, the joy was enormous. I was happy making little buns, stealing from the baker the preparation of the sweet cheese to add to my own super quesadilla and then, helping to display the result of the magic that I, from time to time, intruded to be a part of.

Mom was the more than committed lady who, with her light and smile, gave another face to the bakery, to the pancito, to the place and now to my memories. She was the one who, occasionally, also became the pastry lady, the strong and graceful lady. It was a marriage of beautiful things, which I saw pristine under the light of my innocence, a synchrony of little pieces that worked perfectly together. A flow of fresh and cold water that ran with its own rhythm and I lived it, and I was part of it.

It used to be a busy place. It’s the border. People coming from Colombia, going back to Venezuela, people leaving Venezuela, going to Colombia. It was a place where trade never stopped and people never stopped. And, well, leaving one country and entering another was what so much hustle and bustle, so much cargo, so many bus drivers and cab drivers shouting from their lungs the destinations and people struggling with a thousand and one bags or luggage to continue with their journey.

But I was always surprised by the space and time for a malta and a quesadilla, for a milk bread to take away because the family was waiting at home, for a smile and a lot of stories to share, there, on the display case, on the counter. There was always time, the pause before continuing.

And that’s what my life has felt like lately.

I worked a lot, and I still work a lot, like dad, mom and the baker, to calculate the right decisions or to try to be right and coherent with the amount of effort required to reach the delicious bread that, for me, translates into achieving and enjoying doing something I have worked so hard for and that is one of many dreams. And here I am still calculating, so that the bread does not get burnt.

I counted on wonderful people, like mom, with whom I would not have otherwise enjoyed the process; with those who offered me sweet words of encouragement that served and continue to serve me to build this character that never stops molding. And here I find myself, once again, witnessing stories that are capable of crossing borders, but to another dimension: through oceans and continents. Meanwhile, I stop to treasure, in those 5 minutes of tranquility, what it means to be part of it, as when I was 7 or 10 years old, but now with 24. How beautiful it is, as at that time, to be part of the process or to be the process itself and what, those moments of approach with the human sowed in me: this empathy of which I say, I get never tired of being a flag.

When I was a child, I remember playing with soda lids and making little figures with them while I pulled my mother, who was very busy, by her blouse to show her what had come out of that little head. I want to continue being that little girl who is not afraid to express herself, who is not afraid to put together little lids and make figures, that little girl who proclaims spontaneity. And now, much more… while I discover the world and wrap myself in stories, in truths, in dreams that are not mine and that keep touching me as if they were.

Each destination builds me a little more and I would love to be able to continue writing, from the Arab Emirates or from a tropical island in Southeast Asia with a torrential rain. I hope I can do it because I live life in a different motion when I can stop to tell it.

Thanks for reading. I hope you can now enjoy the smell of your freshly baked bread, the crispness of a crispy crust, and the delicious taste that comes from working slowly and steadily towards your goals.