We stood, forks in hand. A pack of wild and sentimental dogs.
Memories flood me now.
A pinch of this and pat of that. Lard, never butter. Adjust the flour if it's humid. Don’t overwork the dough. Brush the crust with milk—it’ll brown better. I cannot do justice to the smell, the aroma of a passing—be it a person or an act of love.
My grandmother is wearing a simple floral apron, faded blue to gray, from a thousand washes. My grandfather did the laundry—the washing machine was in the kitchen, so he is with me, too, in his own way. Her apron is her surgical gown. Her kitchen with the 50’s metal cabinets, frosted glass, still intact, is her operating theater. People who never lived it would pay a shit load of cash to be that vintage. She would simply shake her head at that thought and get lost in the flour and the apples and the sugar. A paring knife her scalpel.
“The crust makes the pie,” my grandmother would say from time to time—but it's really about the hands. I’ve chased that crust like a hop head chases his first high. There are just certain things that are only that honest, once.
She weighed about 95 pounds, my grandmother, maybe close to a hundred with a crucifix, dangling, and a rosary in her blouse pocket. She lived about five minutes from her parish, St. Mary’s, so she was always dressed for the occasion. Her name was Mary, too. It was a small town.
This is the last one—there must be a last one. Always. The last apple pie she baked, and we are going to eat it. What choice did we have? Shellac it and put it on a shelf? There’s no poetry in that.
We pulled that pie from the freezer and let it thaw, then baked it—golden brown. We paced like expectant fathers. My two brothers, my sister-in-law, and my mom. At Christmas, one of the last we would all be together.
And then we celebrated—feasted.
On a life and a pie.
Sweet.
In that order.