Cinnamon Bread

A New Dwelling Ritual Memoir Piece

Photo by Mae Mu on Unsplash

This morning I added cayenne and Korinjie cinnamon to my stoneware mug before pouring the coffee in. It is a taste I learned I loved from the big green mermaid. Starbucks used to have a Mexican Coffee containing cayenne, chocolate, coffee, and cinnamon. It was a specialty drink campaign that got me into the store every day for the duration of that recipe. I was working in Michigan City at that time and stopped every morning before my education job began.

Cinnamon and I have a deep relationship of excess. In every recipe I make I use at least 4 times the amount the recipe calls for. Just like garlic, I measure with my heart. There is a comfort there that stems back to cinnamon on buttered toast made for me by my Oma. I loved to watch the powdery cinnamon absorbed by the melted butter.

Extreme is an adjective used to describe me by others. I used to run ultra-marathons (anything over 26.2 miles) which is an extreme distance. I ran 60-80 miles to prepare for these races. I was an all-in teacher and coach and spent more hours than my contractual time. I was on every committee known to man. There are things I care deeply about and sink into them.

Because of some of this extreme behavior, over the course of my 50 years on this planet, I have burned down my life many times. I quit a tenured job to take a gamble on a charter school because I wanted to work with the principal again. I divorced my high school sweetheart after 19 years of marriage. My second husband died by his own hand. I left an educational coaching job in January 2020 to teach kindergarten before the a worldwide lockdown. Some were my instigation and others I had to clean up from. But all stemmed from choices I made in my life.

Another choice with a huge impact was moving. I would say I have moved more times than I can count, but I can. It just depresses me to sit down and figure it out. It feels like a failure to have moved so many times. In one five-year container I moved eight times.

I am GEN X and although we are known to be scrappy and the generation to have known life before home computers and Google, there is a lot of baggage. I was raised to be independent, but not too independent by an East German grandmother. I was raised to believe I could do anything, but also expected to do everything. I was the generation of “you can have a career and be a mother and be great at everything.” I was raised to buy the largest house I could “afford” even though debt for the rest of your life was a likely consequence. Hello capitalism and consumerism.

I don't recall the first move of my life because I was 2.5 years old. I have glimpses of the train tracks next to our house, but I believe it is more an imposed visual memory than an actual memory. It is one of those memories imposed from the stories told around you and the home movies you are forced to watch on a Friday night in the basement.

I moved to the Tichenor residence hall at Ball State [no longer there] in 1992 when I went to college and had the first taste of true freedom with that move. I rented the upstairs apartment in a house on a side street off campus my junior year. Married housing my senior year.

I didn’t live alone long enough.

When I moved into the Colonial Crest apartments in connection to my first teaching job the ritual of baking the cinnamon bread began. I wanted to mark the “real” moves with something sensory. The idea of the cinnamon bread came to fruition.

I watched entertainment host Katie Brown make this bread on a lifestyle TV show. The color-printed copy is crinkly with dried dripped oil, flour, and cinnamon spillings on it. It is still tucked into a Cook’s Notebook where I handwrote recipes over the years and tucked print outs into the pages to not lose them. I looked for the recipe when this essay came to mind and was surprised it was still in there.

When my first husband and I moved into the second apartment with the fireplace I made the bread again. The smell of the cinnamon made it feel like home. I did more cooking in that galley kitchen than any other home besides the tiny house I am in now. I could stir on the stove and open the fridge without moving. The sink was directly behind me. It was perfect.

I made the cinnamon bread at other houses in between including the farm house. It was about the ritual of making the bread, not eating it. My first husband would not eat the bread so often I had a piece and then took the rest to school. If you know anything about schools, if you want something to disappear you put it in the teachers’ lounge.

When I turned 40 I was miserable because the life I was told would make me happy truly did not. I had accomplished a lot by this time. I was a mother, an ultra runner, owned a 2500 square foot house and two cars, was damn good at my job, but not happy.

I do look back and wonder if it was more about an idealized notion of what that word happy was supposed to even mean or if I just needed a change. But I am the woman who decides and takes action and this time was no different.

I moved into an apartment after moving out of the house I shared with my soon-to-be ex-husband. This apartment was a mistake in many regards. I didn’t tour it before I moved in that April morning. It smelled like cigarette smoke and there was no wifi. I soothed myself with lemon chicken , no knead bread recipe, and tequila straight with limes when I remembered to buy the little green fruit but not the cinnamon bread. I had to make toast in a skillet because I had no toaster. It was next to a cemetery so the next door neighbors were quiet.

I went to the library daily. I ran. I walked to the European market downtown and bought cheese with the apricot in it and bread from the nuns.I took myself out for sushi at the grocery store and chicken saag and naan at my favorite Indian restaurant. I walked to the post office and with my masters degree tried to understand how to buy stamps from a robot vending machine that baffled me.

The upstairs neighbors fought and cried and woke me up at midnight and then banged on my door when I used my food chopper. I was afraid in that apartment many nights.

There were many moves after that cemetery adjacent apartment and the thought of the cinnamon bread came to mind but it didn’t seem worth the effort to make it. I began to wonder when I moved in how long I would actually be there. I am sure there are residences I made the bread and just don’t remember. But the cinnamon remains.

The essence is I always just needed the cinnamon. The ritual of making the bread was nice to help me feel grounded but it didn’t stick like I had once thought it would- just like all the other spaces I lived in. I thought it was about the size of the space, or the stuff that surrounded me ,and it wasn’t. It was about safety and comfort.

We often believe that we need all of these things in order to live well and be happy and sometimes it is just the warmth and comfort of something warm, sweet and distinct, just like cinnamon. Cinnamon smells like home.

What is your cinnamon? I would love to know.

Thanks for reading.