My Neighbor in My Roti

Transformations of energy and matter happen everywhere, all the time. This we know. Our cells convert sugar into ATP to power our every action, like kneading the dough for roti.

As I'm wrangling the dough into a smooth, pliable ball, I think to myself, where am I getting this energy? And I realize that it's from the plum I just ate from my neighbor's tree.

The neighbor who eagerly signs up to go with me to protest marches, whose Grammy-winning daughter's bandmate slept in our house because he needed a bed, who knits little dog sweaters in our neighborhood crafting circle and offers her plums to everyone, including a little boy who I brought over to pick plums because he’d never seen a plum tree before.

But if I keep thinking about it, it's also from the avocado in my lunch. From another neighbor's tree offered to me by a different neighbor, who I left some homemade biscotti for because I remembered she liked them. She loves redistributing the neighborhood's fruity gifts, has a big heart, fosters puppies, and loves messaging to ask if anyone has an onion or whatever other ingredient she needs. (And it always appears.)

The neighbor whose trees bear beautiful, fleshy, thin-skinned avocados hosts our annual Halloween block party and makes homemade pizzas for all the kids in the neighborhood while we all share food and laugh at our costumes.

Energy radiates into me from the smiles and hugs and cheery chats with my neighbor, who is really a heart-sister, and who's taught every kid in our neighborhood how to swim, and some of the grown-ups, too.

I convinced her to give away her homemade cheesecake to a different neighbor instead of to me, so I could conquer my sweet tooth. And that neighbor was delighted and surprised since her grandson is visiting.

Energy pours into me from a delicious fresh peach. From that other neighbor who received bags of tree-ripened peaches from her Cambodian farmer friend, and insisted that we take some home after we celebrated the arrival of her son and grandson with a summer backyard party, feeling like when we were young and summer stretched on forever, wrapped in the cloak of sunshine, peach juice dribbles and laughter.

But-- the energy of my “kneading hands” is only one partner in the dance of making roti.

It's also in the hands of the farmer who tilled the soil, nurtured the wheat, and those invisible microbial elves beneath the soil who helped it grow.

It's the hands of those who milled the wheat into flour, led it to my market shelves, where the hands of the cashier enabled the flour to enter my home.

The hands that felled the tree, that became the wooden rolling pin and platform to roll the dough, itself a gift from the hands of my beloved mother-in-law.

The breath of clouds that turned into the water that mixed with the flour, and that blessed the fruited trees that powered my kneading this softball of dough, that will nourish me tonight and keep the cycle going.

Like the sunshine that has nurtured all in this web of interconnected life, and the generosity that is manifest through a neighborhood, one kind act at a time.

And I have tasted all that magic in my roti this evening.