After school on Fridays my mom would usually take me to buy a loaf of challah from the Clever Hans Bakery in Ithaca, in upstate New York, where I grew up. This was a kind of hat tip to the ways of our forebears. For me, the visit to the bakery was more about the brownie with mint icing that I called a “greenie,” and that I ate ferociously in my car seat on the way home. This was another kind of holy sacrament, my first appreciation of what it felt like to finish the week, to transition from work to rest (even if, for me, at that time, work largely consisted of coloring).
