What doesn't budge will break

Where safety and sustainability collide.

We’re standing in line at a farmers’ market in Denver, sun beating down our backs. I pop the collar of my shirt, scrunching my shoulders up to my ears to hide the newly exposed nape of my neck, inches of hair recently chopped off as an attempt to scratch the itch for change that surfaced again a few months back.  The vibe I’m giving off is more vampire-cowering-in-the-light than misunderstood-John-Hughes-protagonist. The sun feels brighter in Colorado. I haven’t been interested in checking whether this is true, my freshly pink skin evidence enough.

My husband is moving back and forth between the pastry case and my place in line, reporting his findings. The tent is wedged between a vegetable stand stacked tall with French breakfast radishes and Swiss chard I keep mistaking for rhubarb and a table pushed to the edge of its capacity by rows of Mason jars, filled with some kind of fermented or pickled carrot or cucumber or pepper. The crowd grows, pushing off the sidewalk and onto the lawn, lush and green, a reminder that for those that do not live in Texas, summer has just begun. Amidst the sea of Tevas and Chacos are Bernese Mountain Dogs and Golden Retrievers and the lone but hard-to-miss Newfoundland—the hiking sandal-to-dog ratio nearly 6:1. I keep the back of my hand held outward, an invitation, and a Labrador sniffs my knuckles briefly as I reach to scratch behind its ears.   

“Sausage roll.” Referencing the pastry and not the dog, my husband walks back to the case, stretching his neck, peering through the shoulders of the people in front of us. “Kouign Amann.” I hum noises of approval, intrigue. His strides lengthen, pick up pace. Another golden retriever walks by, panting.

“There’s a Japanese curry croissant,” he tells me.

“That’s interesting.”

“Would you eat it?” I consider this.

The aforementioned Japanese curry croissant, admired but not ordered.

A family friend asked me a couple of weeks back, on a trip to D.C., why I enjoyed visiting bakeries in each city, why I made it a point to go to new ones each time. The question seemed, at first, absurd—a bakery an enticing enough place to serve as an obvious answer. I’m sure confusion was written on my face while we stood swaying on the Red Line, steadying ourselves with the railing as the train pulled us out of the city and into the suburbs. I stammered out an answer about admiring the creativity, noticing the differences based on season and geography, ingredients dependent on what produce is accessible and available. The operative word, I suppose, being noticing.

Faced with the pressure to order the croissant rather than admire it, my interest quickly fades. I hesitate in my response. “Probably not.”

A woman a good six inches shorter than me and 20 years my senior, grey hair sparkling silver in the morning sun, turned toward me from her place in line and laughed. “Sometimes you just want a pastry. You want to stick with the basics.”

My husband interjects, “But what if it’s good, you know?”

I side with the woman. “It’s a risk, not sure I’m feeling bold this morning.”

It was a familiar conflict: to stick with what felt known, what felt sure, or to branch out and try something new. The croissant was inconsequential, the pastry a poor metaphor for what life had become: calculated, contained, predicated on routine and predictability. The threat of disappointment too great a hurdle to maneuver.

I’d always prided myself on having strong convictions and yet I found myself in a bind, knowing that the building of preferences rested solely on opening oneself up to novel experiences. The life I envisioned pushed out against the life I had constructed. The expansiveness I craved could not coexist with my dwindling tolerance for the unfamiliar. One of these would have to budge.

I envision myself a skyscraper, unmoving. Any engineer would be quick to tell you this is structurally unsound. A Google search reveals: Buildings need to sway to dissipate the energy from external forces, preventing structural damage or even collapse. Sway ensures that the building remains intact and safe during strong winds or earthquakes. The more I stand frozen in the face of choice, bearing down and inflexible, the more vulnerable I become to the elements.

Sometimes I find myself locked into fear, waiting for those external forces, that strong wind that will bring it all crumbling down. The line between passivity and rigidity becoming harder to distinguish over time. I have created a container so strong the only way I know how to escape it is to destroy it entirely.

In the end, I ordered a cardamom bun, my husband the sausage roll. We sat at a small bistro table tucked underneath an umbrella in the center of the park, an island amid the Saturday morning shoppers. My husband bit into his pastry, examined the interior. Chewing, he leaned back in his chair to catch sight of the jazz quartet playing off in the distance. “How is it?” I asked. “It’s good,” he paused, “Sweeter than I expected—the dough is sweet." He took another bite.

And there I watched the preference form. I did not ask whether it was worth it, whether he would have ordered something else knowing what he knew now. Those two realities ran parallel to one another, never meeting. I pulled open my cardamom bun, the center sticky against my fingertips. It tasted exactly how I figured it would.

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If you find yourself at the City Park Farmers Market in Denver, feeling more bold than I that day, buy yourself a Japanese curry croissant from Moon Raccoon Baking Company.

Additionally, I would shove a small child out of the way to drink another Cinnamon Maple Nitro Cold Brew from Sati Coffee Co while walking on that beautiful park lawn and petting Golden Retrievers.

One other thing of note is that what brought us to Denver was a friend’s wedding, and I found myself in a situation in which I had to beg this friend to be a mule for my honey and almond butter. I emerged from (what can only be described as) a brief blackout with five jars of various whipped and flavored honeys and nut butters and not an inch to spare in my luggage. I did pay her with Whipped Cardamom Honey. But I also officiated her wedding, so it seems fair.