Throwback Thursday: Brian's Toast

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Brian's Toast

A minor "truth is stranger than fiction" element in Bryony is the way Melissa's younger brother makes toast. First, he methodically trims off the crusts around the perimeter of the bread, and then he carefully butters both sides. Brian, Melissa had said, could eat an entire loaf of bread this way, one piece at a time.

I remember the evening I wrote this passage, nearly two decades ago. My now twenty-year-old son was crawling around the floor; the three, older children were "remodeling" the backyard clubhouse with the kids across the street. An old, electric typewriter sat on a small, bedside table. I knelt before it and typed out this scene while trying to keep an eye on the baby.

Ten years and two children later, my then seven year old son began making toast in a similar fashion. No one had ever read this passge; indeed, no one in the family even knew the manuscript, in pieces and stages, existed. I had never met anyone who prepared toast this way.. As far as I knew, my mind invented it. Yet, like Brian, Daniel could eat an entire loaf of bread this way, one piece at a time.

Daniel, now fifteen, is less messy, but he still makes the best toast of anyone I know.