Sam Jacobs: Sadness Meets Sourdough – KQED

PerspectivesSam Jacobs: Sadness Meets SourdoughListenSam JacobsDec 11Save ArticleSave ArticleFailed to save articlePlease try againEmailAfter losing her father, Sam Jacobs honors his memory by channelling her grief through baking.
On a Thursday night, a dusting of flour settles across my kitchen and stays until Sunday morning, when I wipe the counters and Swiffer the floor while I wait to pull a crusty sourdough boule from the oven.
I am not a baker. This my ritual of communing with the dead.
Before my dad committed suicide five years ago, the sourdough ritual was his, and I had no idea what it involved. My first attempts were awful. But I stubbornly gnawed at the gummy hockey pucks of my failures because I couldn’t throw them away.
Now as I bake, I talk to my father about different things I wish he knew, and the bread turns out just fine. “Hey,” I whisper and I whisk the leaven. “The kiddos want to be a hummingbird and a cockatoo for Halloween.” “Hey,” I whisper and I shape the dough. “I need you. Why aren’t you here?” I bake this yearning into the loaf with the starter, water, flour and salt, and I eat it like I am starving.
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My diagnosis is complicated grief — a form of intrusive mourning that lasts beyond a year. I appreciate the label’s descriptive logic. Grief is visceral. Hungry. Feral. Like the wild yeast that makes my bread.
Then, I try and leave the sadness so I can mother, work, dance, laugh from my belly, and howl at the moon. I bake so I remember to feed myself. All of myself. A shamelessly greedy slice. Too much butter, if there is such a thing. “Hey,” I whisper as I chew. “I see you. I accept you. I release you.”
I wonder how many Thursdays it will take until these words become something I believe, as tangible and indisputable as a loaf of steaming bread on my countertop.
With a Perspective, I’m Sam Jacobs.

Sam Jacobs is an adjunct law professor and a capital defense lawyer who is working on her first non-fiction book. She lives in Alameda, where she and her kiddos stroll the beaches of the San Francisco Bay looking for seashells and pelicans.

ListenAfter losing her father, Sam Jacobs honors his memory by channelling her grief through baking.
On a Thursday night, a dusting of flour settles across my kitchen and stays until Sunday morning, when I wipe the counters and Swiffer the floor while I wait to pull a crusty sourdough boule from the oven.
I am not a baker. This my ritual of communing with the dead.
Before my dad committed suicide five years ago, the sourdough ritual was his, and I had no idea what it involved. My first attempts were awful. But I stubbornly gnawed at the gummy hockey pucks of my failures because I couldn’t throw them away.
Now as I bake, I talk to my father about different things I wish he knew, and the bread turns out just fine. “Hey,” I whisper and I whisk the leaven. “The kiddos want to be a hummingbird and a cockatoo for Halloween.” “Hey,” I whisper and I shape the dough. “I need you. Why aren’t you here?” I bake this yearning into the loaf with the starter, water, flour and salt, and I eat it like I am starving.

My diagnosis is complicated grief — a form of intrusive mourning that lasts beyond a year. I appreciate the label’s descriptive logic. Grief is visceral. Hungry. Feral. Like the wild yeast that makes my bread.
Then, I try and leave the sadness so I can mother, work, dance, laugh from my belly, and howl at the moon. I bake so I remember to feed myself. All of myself. A shamelessly greedy slice. Too much butter, if there is such a thing. “Hey,” I whisper as I chew. “I see you. I accept you. I release you.”
I wonder how many Thursdays it will take until these words become something I believe, as tangible and indisputable as a loaf of steaming bread on my countertop.
With a Perspective, I’m Sam Jacobs.

Sam Jacobs is an adjunct law professor and a capital defense lawyer who is working on her first non-fiction book. She lives in Alameda, where she and her kiddos stroll the beaches of the San Francisco Bay looking for seashells and pelicans.