Five Years

Daddy drove me to the interview; I was scared of downtown. I remember the sweater I wore, and that I was early for the interview, and sitting at the table in the back to fill out the application while I waited for the French owner whose name I still wasn't sure how to pronounce.

It was Mom's idea. I was looking for a job to fill in a few free months--from February to June--and I had always liked baking, so she thought I should write Dad's college roommate's sister, who owned this bakery in Pike Place Market. I looked it up online, discovered it was called Le Panier, and found an e-mail address. Sending an e-mail is painless enough, especially when you don't know the person on the other end, so I decided it could do no harm.

Kristi wrote back right away, and told me my timing was good, and I should come in for an interview with her partner Thierry the following Thursday. I was excited, and surprised, and a little overwhelmed with all the unknowns involved. So even though I had just spent a year in Europe, traveling and going to school and facing all kinds of multilingual adventures on my own, I was glad to have Dad to drive me to the bakery that first day. He dropped me off at the curb and went to his office on 5th avenue, leaving me with specific instructions on which route to take when I walked up to meet him after the interview.

Thierry, in a chef's coat and French accent, took me further into the recesses of the kitchen and glanced over my application while I stood beside him at a wooden table. He asked me a couple of questions, like when could I start? And he introduced me to Christian, who didn't seem very social, especially when they started talking together in French. I felt out of place. "Great, you can start work next Tuesday," Theirry said, ushering me back to the sales floor. "You can come at 6:30. Or 6:45, or 7:00 -- it doesn't really matter." I was glad - after all, I had wanted the job. But as I walked out into the cold sunshine, I wondered what I would be doing? Did they really need me, or were they hiring me as a favor to Kristi in honor of Dad's connection with her brother Joe? Who would I be working with? What should I wear?

I didn't even know if I was on time when Dad dropped me off at the curb again on Tuesday morning, since I wasn't sure what time they wanted me to arrive. Thierry showed me downstairs (I hadn't even known there was a downstairs), gave me an apron, and turned me over to Katharine. I helped her make sandwiches and then was doing odd jobs for her, but she got sick midway through the morning and went home, so I was turned over to Khomphet. He ran out of things for me to do and turned me over to Christian. He didn't have anything for me to do and turned me over to the sales crew. They had me bag cookies for a while, but that didn't take long, and then there was no one else to turn me over to. I got the feeling that no one was really expecting me and I wasn't needed, and I went home early.

But by the time I left mid-June (to work in Stehekin for the summer), Katharine and I were fast friends and I had forged a place for myself working by her side. I also often helped Khomphet fill, roll, fold, and cut the croissant and feuilletage doughs. And I had a spot waiting for me to come back to when I returned home in October. My last day of work before I left, we had a sushi and champagne party in my honor. Of course, I had not yet developed a taste for sushi (that would come later), and I didn't drink champagne. But my heart warmed at the gesture anyway.

When I came back, happy to see everyone again, Katharine picked up where she had left off and continued to expand my skills until I could make nearly all of the pastries. Khomphet liked to take us out to noodles after work once in a while to tell us, in his slow, quiet way, that he appreciated us. Kristi was always warm and full of good things to say, and even Christian, who I was thought of as unsocial, turned out to have a sense of humor. There were more sushi parties for birthdays and the annual turkey feast on Thanksgiving eve. I was there long enough to see other employees come and go, and I even began to have a hand in training the ones who worked downstairs.

Dad had long since stopped taking me downtown every day; I now drove my newly purchased Volvo (my first car) to the Issaquah Park & Ride, and the walk from the bus stop through the streets of downtown didn't scare me anymore. The first day I took the bus home, I wasn't sure which of the four corners at the intersection of 2nd & Stewart the bus would stop at. So I waited at one corner through several scheduled bus runs until I finally realized that the actual bus stop was kitty-corner to where I had been standing for probably forty-five minutes or an hour. I got better at bus riding.

I would sometimes do errands for myself or Mom downtown, and the tangle of streets and shops (and even some of the people) became more familiar to me. Thierry asked me if I would be interested in housesitting for him while he was in France for six weeks in the summer, so I became even better acquainted with Seattle while living in what Aaron dubbed "The French Mansion." That was the summer that Aaron and Heidi were engaged. Their wedding was a big event in my life, and I dragged the whole bakery along with me. Katharine and I ended up making the desserts for the reception (I thought she volunteered; turns out I misunderstood her and volunteered her myself. But she gracefully went along and it was a lovely reception.) Thierry and Kristi were generous in letting us use the bakery kitchen for our labors, and others helped with manual labor, advice, and taste-testing in the last minute push before the wedding.

The next spring, as the due date approached for Aaron and Heidi's baby, I told everyone at work a hundred times about the impending arrival, and they all knew that I wouldn't be at work the day it happened. Drew's girlfriend was pregnant at the same time, due three months earlier, and he and I compared notes about how the pregnancies were progressing. When Heidi was in early labor, I was tied to my phone the whole day and as soon as I could leave, I zipped across 5-20 to Kirkland to join Heidi, Aaron, and Mom at the birth center where we welcomed Peter Christian into the world.

A couple of years at Christmas time John came in to work with me, and once Mom came too. They would join the fray making mountains of tarts and Buche de Noel, and get a chance to meet the people I was always talking about and to enter my basement world.

In November of 2007, Katharine left, something she had been wanting to do for a long time. By default, that left me in charge of pastries. I was a little concerned at first, but we got through Christmas okay, and then the months kept going and the case always seemed to be full, so I settled into my new position and quit worrying that I wouldn't be able to get everything done.

The next summer, Jeff was the one who was engaged, and again, I got the bakery caught up in the excitement by making his wedding cake in the bakery kitchen. A couple of months after that, Heidi told us that she and Aaron were expecting again, so the next May I missed another day of work for Lucy Rebecca's arrival.

I knew I didn't want to stay at the bakery forever, and I was always open to something else, if it came along. But it never did, so I kept getting on the 214 to Seattle every morning, and making my way down the cobblestone hill to that squeaky green door. When I wondered if there was any point, eternally speaking, in making pastries, God would remind me of all the relationships I had at the bakery, and I was content. Then in the fall of 2009, making pastry cream one morning, I knew it was time to leave. I didn't want to be making pastry cream for the rest of my life, or even for one more day. It was scary to think about leaving without knowing what was next, and I wondered if it was foolish. But God opened doors for me to talk with my employers, now no longer reserved and intimidating French bakers, but my friends. And though they were sad to see me go, they, too, could see why I felt that it was time.

So, at the end of March, I will hop on the 214 at 5:53 AM for the last time. I will say goodbye to all the good and boring and taxing and beautiful and familiar and comfortable and stressful and secure things about being the pastry chef at Le Panier, and I will enter a new season.

Thanks be to God for giving me this job, where I learned not to be afraid of lots of things: downtown streets, more work than I thought I could accomplish in the allotted time, bums asking for handouts, relationships with people who are different from me. I will miss Tru looking out for me. I will miss Alice's bright "Good morning, Julie!" when I first step in the door, and Laura saying, "These are beautiful today, Julie!" I will miss Kristi sharing stories about her girls, crying with me over something God is doing in my life or hers, or helping me fit my bridesmaid dress. I will miss heart talks with Karin about what God is teaching us, and dear friendly chats with Jana, who really cares, and Christian taking care of me, almost like a father, and the family feeling on holidays when things get really busy and we work together until it is all done!

I am not sorry for the five years of my life that I have spent in a little basement in the corner of Pike Place Market. And I am excited to look ahead to what God will do with me next.