"Baker"

BY JOELIS PAGAN GRACIA

She is a baker. She's been a baker her whole life. Her grandparents had their own bakery since 2000. Baking has been in her family for generations.

I’ve worked in my father’s bakery with my sisters since I graduated high school. While my parents baked the bread, my sisters and I worked on the pastries. Every day was the same routine, but nothing was the same as the day before.

My father started hiring new people, and with those people was my now husband. That’s how we met. Two years later, we got married, and we still worked at the bakery. In 2014, my mother passed away, and the bakery was sold to someone outside the family. A few years later, one of my five sisters opened her own bakery. Two years later, one of my mother’s sisters bought our family’s bakery back and changed its former name to “Celia’s Bakery,” in honor of my mom. 

In 2017, Hurricane Maria struck, and our lives changed. Out of my whole family, including my five sisters, my father and I were the only ones who lost our house completely. He decided to stay, but I had to move to the U.S. because I was worried about my children’s education; schools had closed for two months, and then students were getting early dismissal because there was no water or electricity. And then a miracle happened. We were able to move because of that miracle.

The bakery is no more, and I am living in a different country. It has been five years since I started my own homemade business baking pastries, made with recipes that have been passed down in my family for generations. As of right now, I can’t rent/buy my own bakery, but that will not stop me from keeping my family’s legacy alive. To me, baking means remembering beautiful times with my family, and that's why I love it so much.