Standards Michigan

At the end of the day, when something disturbs my inner comfort and my thoughts begin to dwell too insistently on questions that clearly have no intention of being resolved before evening, I do something that would probably disappoint every admirer of sophisticated psychological methods: I roll up my sleeves, go into the kitchen, and begin kneading dough. Not with a mixer, not with a food processor, but with my own hands, exactly as my Greek and Bulgarian grandmothers used to do, two women who grew up in different countries, spoke different languages, yet possessed an astonishingly similar understanding of the ways in which a person can restore their peace of mind. Both of them used to tell me almost exactly the same thing: “If dark thoughts enter your head, get out the flour!” And I have been getting out the flour for half my life. This evening, I add pumpkin, walnuts, cinnamon, honey, and olive oil, because I have decided to make Bulgarian pumpkin banitsa, which in Greek we call kalokythopita. I roll out the pastry sheets myself, feeling how the dough gradually acquires the necessary softness and elasticity, prepare the filling, and arrange everything in the baking tray with that concentrated calm which is difficult to achieve when one sits motionless, trying to persuade one's own thoughts to stop troubling them. The remarkable thing is that by the time the banitsa is ready to go into the oven, I am already calm. Not because the problems have disappeared, nor because I have discovered some extraordinary philosophical solution, but because my hands have been occupied with something real, something that has its own sequence, requires patience, and leaves no room for endless imaginary conversations with people who are not even present. I find myself thinking how strange and wonderful it is that my two grandmothers, one Greek and the other Bulgarian, left within me not only their languages, tastes, and memories of their homes, but also an almost identical response to human anxiety. In their world, nobody called this therapy, nor did anyone feel the need to invest it with scientific significance. There was flour, there were hands, there was work to be done, and there was enough experience of life to know that sometimes thought becomes more bearable when we stop giving it all our attention. These two worlds have never competed within me for supremacy. Bulgarian banitsa and Greek kalokythopita do not argue about their origins on my kitchen table, just as cinnamon, honey, and olive oil have no interest in the nationality of the hands that bring them together. Traditions have survived enough generations not to require constant certificates of belonging. There is a particular tranquillity in the thought that a person can carry two traditions not as a division, but as a natural whole, which sometimes manifests itself in language, at other times in memory, and this evening simply in the way I roll out the dough. The banitsa is already in the oven. The scent of cinnamon gradually fills the kitchen, the day has come to an end, and I realise once again that for half my life I have been trying to understand the complexity of human existence through books and philosophy, while two women who gave me their most practical advice long ago knew something that I continue to put into practice without the slightest modification. When dark thoughts appear, I get out the flour. And at least this evening, both my grandmothers have proved to be right once again. Calm evening