I Thought I Had Invented Something

I was about five when I found a slice of bread on the kitchen floor.

It was pale, dry and hard. I do not remember wondering how long it had been there or whether it was clean. I remember that it was food.

This was before I came to the orphanage in Stargard. I was still living with my biological family in Poland, in a small farmhouse attached directly to a barn. The front door opened into the kitchen. There was an old table and three chairs, a room to the left, and another farther back. I slept on the floor in that back room.

I lived there with my siblings and, when they were home, my parents. They drank heavily and were often away. At that age, I did not have much to compare our life with. It was where we lived, and hunger was part of it.

My parents had come home the night before. I assumed the bread had been left on the floor after they came in. Even there, it was something I could get into trouble for taking.

I was holding it when I heard a sound outside. My first thought was my father. I was afraid he would see that I had taken the bread and become angry, so I put it down on the old stove and went to the window.

Nobody was coming towards the house. A car was passing on the road outside.

I watched it. I do not know for how long. I remember the window and the car. Then I remembered the bread.

What the bread had become

When I went back, the bread still looked pale. But the outside had become crisp. I took a bite and found that the inside was soft.

I remember how much I enjoyed it. I smiled. There were butterflies in my stomach, the kind that came with the excitement of what had just happened. I wanted to find more slices.

I had only put the bread down because I needed to look outside. I had not known what the heat would do to it. Yet here was something that had been dry and hard, and now it tasted so good that I wanted to do it again.

I thought I had invented something.

I ate the whole slice by myself. Nobody saw me or took it away. For those few minutes, I had something good, and I had discovered a way of making it.

That is what I feel proud of when I remember the boy in that kitchen. Something had happened by accident, and he had noticed. He did not understand how it worked, but he knew what to try if he found another slice.

Trying it again

When I was about twenty, I tried it again.

There was some dry bread left over. I wanted to find out what it would be like now that I was an adult. I did not have an old stove like the one from that kitchen, so I used an oven.

The bread became soft again. But the smile was missing, along with the butterflies I remembered from being little and hungry.

I had warmed the bread, and I could eat it. The sensation I remembered had not come back with it.

Looking at the two moments now, I find it difficult to separate the taste of that first slice from everything that came with it. I had been hungry. I had been surprised. I had made a discovery without knowing I was about to make one. All of that belongs to the memory.

At twenty, I already knew what I hoped would happen to the bread. I was trying something I remembered. At five, I was finding it out.

The curiosity I recognise

Today, when something catches my attention, I often want to know how it works. I start researching. Sometimes I try it myself, even when I know very little about it. Sometimes that means experimenting with a different way of doing a repetitive task, to see whether I can make it easier.

I enjoy having something to find out. An unfamiliar thing gives me a reason to look more closely, ask a question or try a different approach. What happens can give me the next thing to try.

In writing about overthinking decisions, I have explored how action can give us information that thinking alone cannot. I recognise that pleasure in a much smaller form here: doing something, noticing the result, and knowing a little more than I did before.

I cannot trace all of my curiosity back to one slice of bread. But when I look at that boy, I recognise his interest. He wanted another chance to see what would happen. That part of him feels familiar to me still.

I have also written about what happens when people know an earlier version of us. When I return to that kitchen in my memory, I bring an adult’s understanding with me. I can name the hunger and the fear. I can see that he should have had enough to eat without being afraid of taking it.

I want to leave room for what he knew, too: the bread tasted good, and he was happy. Understanding more about his life does not require me to take that happiness out of the memory.

I still remember the kitchen, the passing car, and the bread on the stove. When I think of the boy eating it, I remember his smile and his wish to find more.

He had learned something he could use the next time. I am still proud of him for that.