Please Don’t Toast the Bread

At forty-seven years old, I can tell you that one of the best things I ever ate was sugar on bread.

And before you get excited and start looking for a recipe, that was the recipe. Sugar. Bread. You’re caught up.

The bread was plain. I didn’t toast it. I didn’t butter it. There was no cinnamon involved. I know somebody wants to improve it already, but please leave my little childhood snack alone. I thought it was good exactly how it was.

Would I eat it now?

Hell no.

I don’t even have to think about it. You could put it on a nice plate, give it a fancy name, and charge eighteen dollars for it. I would still know what you did. That is bread with sugar on it, and I need you to take it back.

But when I was a kid, honey, you could not have convinced me that wasn’t the best thing I had ever eaten.

We were broke back then. My mother had five children, worked two jobs, and didn’t have a car. She used public transportation. That woman had to get herself to work, get herself home, and take care of us. She did what she had to do.

I understand that much better now than I did when I was busy putting sugar on bread.

As a child, I wasn’t doing the math on two jobs and five kids. I wasn’t considering how long it took her to get somewhere on the bus or how tired she might be when she got home. I knew we didn’t have much money, but I didn’t understand every single thing that meant.

I wanted something sweet, and I made it myself.

That’s another thing: my mother wasn’t handing this out as her signature dessert. I was the person putting it together. So if anybody wants to complain about the preparation, come see me. She had enough to do.

It sounds ridiculous when I explain it now, because there really is nothing to explain. You take plain bread and put sugar on it. Then you eat it.

No appliances needed. No waiting for anything to cool. I had found a snack that matched my qualifications.

And I liked it.

I’m not saying I ate it and told myself it was good because I wanted it to be. At the time, it really was good to me. I wasn’t sitting there wishing I had added butter or wondering how it would taste toasted. Those are adult questions. The child who made it was satisfied.

Now adult me has a whole lot to say.

Adult me wants to know why we didn’t at least toast the bread. Then I have to remind myself that this isn’t an opportunity to go back and critique a child’s snack. I made something with what was available, and I enjoyed it. Why am I trying to supervise myself several decades later?

Let that little girl eat.

Besides, I’m pretty sure she would think I was doing too much. She had bread and something sweet to put on it. Here I come with suggestions, as if she asked for a consultation.

The funny part is that I remember enjoying it so much, but I have absolutely no interest in trying it again. Usually, when somebody talks about a favorite childhood food, they want to find it or make it. They’re looking for the old recipe. They want the brand they used to buy.

I have everything I need to recreate mine.

I’m still not doing it.

I don’t need a taste test to prove the memory is real. I remember what I liked, and I’m willing to trust my younger self on that. She can keep her sugar bread. I’ll keep my other options.

What stays with me now is my mother.

Five kids and two jobs. I say it, and then I have to stop for a second, because that is a lot. Add having no car, and I honestly don’t know how she kept doing everything she needed to do.

I get tired thinking about the transportation alone. When you have a car, you can get in it and leave. When you depend on public transportation, getting somewhere takes planning around somebody else’s schedule. And she had two jobs to get to.

Then there were five of us.

I was the youngest, which means she had already been dealing with children for a while before I showed up with my needs and my apparently adventurous approach to bread.

Back then, she was just my mom. Moms do things, and children get used to those things getting done. You don’t necessarily stop and ask what it took. You get older, have more responsibilities yourself, and suddenly something you barely thought about as a child can make you sit still.

I look back now and have a lot more appreciation for her.

That doesn’t mean I want to dress up being broke. I’m not going to tell you that we were secretly rich because we had each other. We were broke. My mother was working two jobs, and money was still tight. I wish things had been easier for her.

I can say that and still tell you I loved my sugar bread.

I don’t have to pretend the snack was terrible just because the circumstances were hard. I also don’t have to make the circumstances sound wonderful because I have a good memory from them.

The bread tasted good to me. My mother was doing a lot. I know both of those things now.

If a restaurant ever puts this on a menu, I hope they’re honest about it. Don’t call it “deconstructed childhood sweetness” and bring out one slice of bread. Don’t put a little flower beside it. And please don’t tell me the sugar has been thoughtfully paired with the bread.

I paired them myself when I was a kid. It did not take a meeting.

The version I remember would never need that kind of introduction. It was something I made when we didn’t have much, and it gave me something sweet to enjoy. That was enough then.

Today, if you ask me whether I want some, the answer is still hell no. I have grown, and so have my expectations.

But if you ask me whether I remember it fondly, absolutely.

I remember how good it tasted to a little girl who made it herself. And now that I’m grown, I think about the woman working two jobs and riding the bus who made sure there was bread in the house.

Note from the Author: There is a little bit of truth in every story I post. This one comes from my childhood memories of sugar on bread and my mother raising five children while working two jobs.