Paul's Bakery

My grandmother took weekly trips across the international bridge from Soo, Michigan to Soo, Ontario to reconnect with her Finnish community. Often that meant buying pulla at Paul's Bakery, a taste that lingers in my memory stronger than Proust's madelines. 

Each year we pilgrim back to Paul's to partake in remembrance.  We buy as many loaves as we think appropriate, and inevitably at least one of the loaves is gone before we even finish the crossing the international bridge back to the USA.  There is something about food and memory and life together that feels more palpable than any religious ceremony, any institutional credo, or even inspiring mythic stories.  The taste the smell the shared experience links us, across time and space to the best things we can imagine.