kolach ovenbird In the kitchen I’ve forgotten to put an apron on, as usual, so my clothes are covered in flour. The air is warm and smells like living bread: yeast and sugar and eggs and milk. Half of my blood began in Ukraine two and three generations ago. I don’t speak the language but I recognize the music it makes when spoken. My Baba died shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine and the simultaneous personal and global tragedies motivated me to think about what it means to claim a culture passed down to me from a country I’ve never visited. It feels essential now, with my grandparents gone and their entire country and heritage threatened, to carry something forward, something that belongs to me in this abstract and confusing way. Food and art are two of the most concrete ways to participate in the traditions that shaped me and so I am spending the day making a braided Ukrainian Christmas bread called Kolach. It’s a process that can’t be rushed. You make a sponge and set it to rise on a warm stovetop. When it’s bubbling and doubled in size you add more flour and knead it to silk. Let it rise again then punch it down. Rise again, then braid into two loaves. Rise a final time then set to bake until golden. Serve Christmas Day with butter alongside pierogies and kielbasa and cabbage rolls and sour cream. I let my hands, as they knead the dough, become a conduit for memories that precede my birth. I let my body house the generations of women who rooted themselves in this slow ritual of tending. The bread is alive and I am alive and they are alive in me: three cords braided together to make something that feeds the future. I don’t quite know how to carry the responsibility of preserving cultural knowledge for the next generation, but I know how to turn flour into bread so that is what I do. 251224 what's it to you? who go blather from