It is a constant crust
that cannot be cut away. The loser piece of the loaf. The beginning that must
be gotten through and the end that must be endured. The heel. And I will not
have it!
As the oldest of five, I
was guaranteed to get it. There was always someone younger who wasn’t up to
crust and it was just easier to serve the last slice to the oldest sibling. And
it had to be eaten because otherwise there wouldn’t be enough to go around. On
top of that, if we had company or cousins…I would wind up with both toasted
tips!
And though I was grateful
for my daily bread, because I was regularly reminded when I complained that
there are people with no bread at all, my elementary aged incisors would
struggle through it’s extra dryness from its position of outer exposure as I
squeezed my bologna and Velveeta between these counterfeit crusts and imagined
I was eating the inner most slice. The prized position in the pan.
Sometimes I would flip
my food upside down, good side up so I couldn’t see it. If the mayonnaise had
been smeared on the standard slice, I would restructure my sandwich, tucking
the obscene brown bit within, so only soft surface was showing, but I knew. And
with every bite, I was less chewing and more gnashing my teeth against a
texture I just couldn’t tolerate.
In adulthood I avoided
sandwiches and toast, thoroughly convinced that I did not like bread. But once
I was married, the loaves were suddenly back on the grocery list and I soon
discovered that it was not bread itself that I despised but the heel!
So I would use the
bread, reaching around the heel to the rest. But eventually, I wound up with a
bunch of moldy heels. So, I started tucking them away in the freezer. Until one
day...my husband confronted me about my heel hording.
He had opened the
freezer to get some ice but had been blindsided by bread. A glut of gluten, all
frozen solid and falling on his face. There were at least 40 little plastic
twist-tied leftover loaf bits all stored up and saved for someday.
“Why is our freezer full
of frozen bread heels?”
“I thought I would use
them for stuffing.”
“You know there are only
two of us, right?”
“But I hate the heel!”
“Then throw it away.”
Throw it away? Just
throw it away?!? This bit of daily bread I had so generously been given when there
were people out there who didn’t have any bread at all…as I had so often been
reminded. But what was I going to do? Send them all of my heels? That’s not
really giving, that’s garbage. And saving it up for someday wasn’t gratitude,
it was guilt.
Guilt over having enough
to go around, even without the heel. Guilt over no longer struggling to get by.
Guilt over doing better. Guilt over gluten I was no longer going to give in to.
I don’t force myself to eat
the heel anymore. I rarely save it either. I don’t have to. And I am grateful.
Follow me on twitter and Instagram! @TheLauraBecker
Follow me on twitter and Instagram! @TheLauraBecker
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