raisins and tears

 I cried in a coffee shop today. 

For reasons I won't get into in this post, after three years of avoiding gluten, I'm testing the reintroduction of wheat to my diet this weekend. Up to this point, I had eaten a pizza, a cabbage hand pie, and a loaf of rustic bread. They were all so delicious. Carbs are glorious--especially soft, airy, glutinous carbs--and I have missed them so much. 

After three days of all that culinary glory, I was pretty sure that wheat probably needs to remain a mostly-no food for me, but I had one thing left on my list of things to enjoy as part of this test, so while I was out running errands today, I popped into bakeries and coffee shops looking for a булка с махом. When I lived here in 1998, these poppy seed rolls were everywhere. Any bakery in the city would sell me a sphere of sweet, silky dough with streaks of poppy seeds rolled through and crystallized sugar sprinkled on top for 2 rubles. I ate one nearly every day. 

Today, three o'clock snack time was approaching, and I had thus far struck out. No poppy seeds to be found in the pastry counters of any of the many places I had stopped into. If the baristas of the city have a group chat, they'll all be talking about the weird American in the floral fabric mask and the yellow backpack who walked in, looked around, and then walked out without ordering anything. 

Three o'clock snack is sacrosanct. I needed something if I was going to get through the rest of today's errands and get myself back home, all on foot. 

Having resolved to just pick something else, I walked into the next coffee shop I came to. 

I stood in front of their pastry case nonplussed. No булка с махом. The apple strudel had walnuts. The cherry danish looked too sweet.

Then I saw it--un pain aux raisins. Decision made.

Adam started eating pain aux raisins when we were in Troyes, the capitol city of France's Champagne region, in 1999, and it quickly became his favorite. Hess Engineering had sent Adam to troubleshoot and solve the problems with a wheel rim manufacturing line they'd sold to Michelin for the plant in that city, and I joined him during the break between my fall and spring semesters. 

Every day, I went to the bakery to buy pastry for the next morning's breakfast. I can still remember contrast between the soft pastry and the firm center of my daily croissant au chocolat, and the mess that pain aux raisins makes when you eat it. Puff pastry rolled into a spiral maximizes the area of outer surface that forms a crispy, flaky crust. But between the layers are raisins and sweet, sticky joy. 

Recently, I was talking to my financial planner, who is an old friend of Adam's family, and she, having wrapped up the business part of our conversation, was waxing poetic about the adventure I'm on in this new stage of my life. How Adam must be so proud of me, how he would have embraced this adventure with me, but I was doing it anyway on my own. I did the telephone equivalent of nodding and smiling, of course, but that's all bullshit. 

The only reason I have this life now is that he died eight years ago. Adam wanted no part of this adventure. I know, because we talked about it. He wanted roots in one place, he wanted to cultivate land and become embedded in a community. Adam travelled a lot, but only because work sent him and paid him a premium to do it. He enjoyed telling the stories he collected on those trips, of course, but what he loved most was returning home. It's a cosmic irony of our marriage that I had all the wanderlust and he had all the passport stamps. 

This pastry on the table in front of me today was a connection to my past. It was a piece of the life that I no longer live. It was a benediction, and I cried.