I carry with me a paperback copy of Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban, pictures by his wife, Lillian Hoban, from the third house I lived in. I was six, and Joellen says I stayed for nearly half the year. I remember the kids were fun and the foster people were nice and they had a lot of books, including Bread and Jam, which I loved so much I read it over and over and hid it in my bed so the other kids didn’t take it. The pictures are pencil sketches in only black, white, and a little blue. It is a story about a family of badgers, nature’s most vicious killer, an animal that kills for fun—but in the Frances books, the badger family stands upright and lives in a house and they wear clothes and talk, and they have manners, they brush their badger hair and badger teeth, they have birthday parties and bedtimes, and the mom wears an apron and runs a tidy, efficient household.

Frances is the older of two badger daughters, and she is having issues with trying unfamiliar food. Almost always, the new food does not work out; poached eggs are slimy, veal cutlet and French-cut string beans are complicated. Frances is sick of new tastes and textures being repeatedly forced on her, being told she’ll love them if she’ll just give them a chance, only to be disappointed again and again and again. So she takes matters into her own hands. She refuses any new food and eats only her favorite meal, bread and jam, all day. Bread and jam instead of slimy eggs for breakfast. She trades the chicken salad sandwich her mother packs in her school lunch for a friend’s bread-and-jam sandwich. Dinner is more bread, more jam. Bread and jam make Frances happy, she always knows what she is getting, and it always tastes good, so she is never disappointed.

Every house I live in is different in every way. They all smell different, different median temperature, and the food is always unfamiliar; people buy a million kinds of peanut butter, milk, cereal, soup; some people cook only in Crock-Pots, or microwaves, or they fry everything that holds still long enough. Some people are really great bakers or barbecuers; some people buy a bunch of mixed nuts in bulk at Costco and call it dinner. Wonderful or horrible, none of it matters. I am a badger.

White, wheat, sourdough, rye, multigrain, French baguette—every house has bread. Homemade or store-bought; strawberry, grape, raspberry—every house has jam. And almost all of them have a toaster.

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread…strength to body and soul alike.

Even John Muir knew the greatness of bread.

Every new house I live in, bread and beauty are home. Toast and a walk. I always know what I am getting, and I am never disappointed.