Baking the Heavy Away

The weather is beautiful this week. And it feels like it's about time.

It's the end of the semester, so everyone is just limping towards the finish line, one due date at a time. But these past few weeks have felt especially rough. I told a friend recently that it felt like those around me were in the middle of an air raid, and I was just waiting for the next hit.

The unexplainable pain of a little life taken much, much too soon.

The gut wrenching story of hurt and wrong and indifference, close to home.

The tears left when a prayer for any answer leads to an answer you were hoping wouldn't come true.

The stone in your stomach when your eyes are opened to yet another way that our society cripples spirits.

Hit after hit after hit. Not touching me, but hitting all around me. Is there a word for that? When you feel the ripples of the quakes that are leaving cracks in people you love? I sit on couches and chairs and floors, hold hands and hearts and stories, and hope that somehow, if my tears mix with theirs, the pain will be less stifling.

But I can't.

I can't make it less. I can't shelter you. I can't pick up the heaviness of it all and carry it on my shoulders so that you can stand tall once again. Though I want to so, so badly - I can't.

So I wrap my arm around your shoulder and ask you how you're really feeling. I give you space to grieve and time to remember and reassurance that doing those things is important and valid.

I bake.

I bake until my roommate gives me and my mountain of pans and bowls a funny look, because I cannot lift the heavy things off your heart. I cannot shelter all the ones I love from this air raid, or any other. But if I put sugar and flour and bananas in a bowl, I know that in 45 minutes there will be something good in this world, something I can hand to you that says "I'm here", something that will make you smile despite the well of tears.

So as the ground shakes beneath our very feet, I will do my best to bake the heavy away.