Swallow with banner and rose

The shutter in the back yard is up again and a pair of swallows have got into the flue above the proving room. I know you will say I should have stuffed it with rag in March, but Baba Ilka sat on her stool at five this morning with her flour-dusted hands in her lap and told me to leave them be. She said they come back to the same mud cup every spring, the way bread comes back to a good starter, and that a bakery with birds in its roof has never burnt down. I did not argue. I was too busy wondering how she knew I had let the second batch of rye overproof.

The ovens are hot now and the street is still dark. Ilka has taught me to scrape the tins with the flat of my palm and to listen for the crust when the loaf is turned. She writes the day's orders on the back of a flour sack in pencil, and this morning there was only one line that was not bread: two dozen rolls for the ferry men, and under it, in her crooked hand, "tell the swallows to mind the chimney." I laughed out loud, and she told me to mind my own.

When the first cart rattled past at half four, the swallows came down the flue in a rush of black wings and settled on the rail above the cooling racks. Ilka lifted the cloth from the last tray and said nothing for a while. Then she tore the heel from a loaf, crumbled it onto the sill, and the birds took it while the window turned grey.

Come home at Easter. The rye is better now, I promise, and there is a stool with your name on it.

Love, Dan