Ace Bandages and Homemade Bread

This morning, after my shower, I began to dress for the day in joggers, a long-sleeved tee and sweatshirt. The first thing I put on, though, was a pair of knee-high support socks with gleeful otters floating about all over them. Putting on the support socks is a struggle, but they do make my healing broken foot feel better.

I lay back with my head on the pillow and my right leg extended in front me. I slipped the toe of the first sock onto the end of my broken foot. I gathered the thick, stretchy fabric of the entire sock onto my toes then began wrestling to pull the stocking up the length of my foot, over my ankle and up my leg. Suddenly, these actions felt so familiar. I was struck by the faded memory of lying in bed with my grandmother as she rolled Ace bandages one at a time around and around her feet, over her ankles and up her calves until she fastened the end of each bandage in place with a metal clip just below her knees. Here I was, that grandma that I remembered from my childhood. How did that happen?

My Grandma Rosebrough about age 69, two years older than I am now

I don’t necessarily feel like a grandma. At least most of me doesn’t. My foot is less painful, less swollen, and less stiff since my steroid injection and the month-long dose of daily pain medication I took. But I was repeating the very action I remember seeing my own grandmother do. And when she did it, she seemed so old!! In my memories from 1969, Grandma Rosebrough was old, I guess. She was seventy-eight at the time. It was a year before her death. Will my grandchildren remember me as being old the year I hobbled about on my broken foot, struggling to put on and pull up my support stockings?

Another vivid memory is of my maternal grandmother making homemade bread, cinnamon rolls, and orange crescent roll. That is an older memory from our life in Boston when she and I were both younger. But she still seemed old even then. She wore lace-up black orthopedic ankle boots or shoes with stockings over the top of her Ace bandages. And plain, dark colored dresses, usually belted or fitted at the waist. Her hair was often secured with a black hair net. I can almost see her out of the corner of my eye, kneading the bread dough she had made with our family’s yeast starter. I loved the dough and would sneak up beside her to pinch off a bite as she turned it over and over in her hands making finger-sized rolls to add to the bread pans. Always thirteen rolls. I don’t know why. But thirteen was a magical number when it came to Grandma’s homemade bread.

She usually made cinnamon and orange rolls, two different breakfast treats, when she baked bread. I liked to hover around her then, too. And probably got scolded for being in the way. I was always reminded of the time that as a child, my mother was sent to the store for a cake of yeast, which she nibbled on all the way home. The yeast made Mom very thirsty so when she got home, she drank a lot of water and then all that water and yeast swelled inside her until she had one colossal stomachache and a lesson learned. I assured my grandmother I would never eat THAT much of her bread and cinnamon roll dough. I knew exactly when enough was enough.

Grandma would snip off the ends off the rolled up buttered dough, cinnamon and sugar that were too small to be proper rolls. My sister would get one and I would get the other. Our kitchen would fill with the cinnamon sweet fragrance of pastries and the yeasty smell of baking bread. There is no aroma in the world that compares with that.

After my grandmother died, it fell on my mother to keep the yeast alive and the tradition of homemade baked goods going. Her bread was every bit as delicious as my grandmother’s. We didn’t have the cinnamon and orange rolls as often, not every time she baked bread. But they became treats saved for Christmas and Easter holidays. And then when we were all grown – my sister, brother, and I – Mom would make them when we returned home for visits.

My mother taught me to make the bread with our now 100-year-old family yeast starter. Those first attempts were nowhere near as good as my grandmother and mother’s bread but I continued to try. Working more than fulltime didn’t allow me to make the bread often and my yeast grew old and tired. Whenever Mom visited, she would bring me a jar with a little of her starter to rejuvenate mine and I would be back in the bread baking business for a short while until my yeast would be neglected again. I managed to make the bread often enough that my young daughters both enjoyed the pleasure of the smell of it baking in our kitchen and the taste of it warm from the oven with butter and honey.

Sadly, my yeast has been forgotten for even longer periods of time in recent years. Its jar seems to get pushed to the back of the refrigerator where I am not reminded to feed it and I am afraid it might even come close to freezing when the fridge is especially full. The yeast is a sad, gray color. Not healthy and bubbly like it was when my grandmother and mother oversaw the bread baking. I feel ashamed of myself for not giving it the love they did.

These days, when I do try to make bread, I will spend a day or two trying to rejuvenate the yeast first. It will struggle to come back to life but never seems to get to the point where the thirteen little dough rolls will rise above the top of the bread pan. Even using my grandmother’s old tin pan doesn’t seem to coax the dough to rise enough. My baked loaves are more the dense consistency of bricks rather than bread.

Brennyn is baking sourdough bread, which is something like our family recipe, with great good fortune. Her yeast is active, her dough rises nicely and her bread is light and flavorful.

Lauren has managed to keep a bit of our family yeast starter alive and makes little dinner rolls with some success. Her rolls rise better than my bread does so she must show love to her yeast more often than I do mine.

In 2014, my sister Valerie and I helped Mom make cinnamon rolls one last time in her tiny apartment in the assisted living community where she and my dad had moved 3 years before. She hadn’t tried to bake for several years so it was a joint effort. Valerie and I took photos to help us remember the steps involved in making the cinnamon rolls and each wound up scrapbooking those pictures.

Baking with Mom

Brennyn is visiting in a week and has promised to bring me a little of her healthy starter to add to my struggling jar of yeast. And we hope to bake bread. How is it possible that my very busy daughters can successfully bake bread while this officially retired grandmother – me – cannot? I can’t bear that idea. So, I continue to feed and try to renew my pitiful yeast starters in hopes that my efforts will be rewarded, and I can bake bread for my grandchildren like my grandmother baked for me.

But if I can’t bake the bread of childhood memories of my grandmother, then I hope there is some other activity they will fondly remember us doing together when they reminisce on their childhoods.