well, we all have to start somewhere.

Sometimes, I just know that if I keep looking for it, life will happen.
I’m terrified of a calling future, because I know it’s totally not what I was expecting it to be, It’s not that I don’t believe it will be perfectly wonderful. Its just that I have no idea what it could possibly hold. I’ve been wasting my thoughts lately deciding whether I want to be a pastry chef, a writer, or someone in the church, someone who works for the broken-hearted people. I can’t get their faces out of my head.

Here are the dreams I dream when I’m dreaming of each of these things, down the road when they’re ready, finally to unfold:

 

If i were a pastry chef, I would own a tiny little bakery on the corner of two quiet streets, perched on the middle of a hill somewhere. It would rain on Saturday mornings — like it did on my wedding day — a drenching  mopping sort of rain that makes the whole world new again. Out into it would come the bravest sojourners, Fathers of children still asleep, Women who write, resolutely coming to fulfill their Saturday traditions. The walls would be a subtle Tuscon yellow, and the room would be quaint. There would be tables everywhere begging to be occupied. As for me, I would wake up early every single morning. Long and long before the sun wakes up itself. The magic of life happens before the sun rises. I would be back in the kitchen (a big kitchen, full of wonderful ovens, so big you can stick huge cakes in them and there still be room for cinnamon rolls on the side, there would be racks to cool all of my delicate breads, pastries, and custards on, and aprons, each different, made by my sister.) I would play quiet music… or maybe classic rock. People would come for the honesty of the food. A rack would be gluten free and a healthy rack for physically minded people. But in the big window, there would be food made without shortcuts or substitutes,  and in the old way of doing things. People would come, because the window in the front would be too big to stay away from. They would come when it rained because the cool shelter from the storm would feel like hiding out. They would come in the spring to greet the window boxes and smell the scented air, they would come in the autumn, when they were so busy they could hardly think. and then one day — it would be routine, and they would forget not to come. I would know them by name and on Thursdays we would have story time for children, the mothers could sit with their coffee and quiche and their children would wander into the secret and magical lands of peter rabbit and mother goose. When I had a daughter, she would come after school and care for the shop as she pleased. Seasons would flow quickly but softly together and I would not doubt the changing of tide, the quiet stability of my very own bakery filled with the people who love all things good.

 

The other two dreams I’ll post images of in the coming week, The field has beckoned my husband away for the days to come.

 

– sparrow