Why We Must Have A Pie
“We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.”
–David Mamet
My grandmother made the best pies in the world. Hands down. No contest.
Barely five feet tall, what my grandmother lacked in size she made up for in patisserie largesse. Cookies, cakes, yeast rolls, biscuits, pies; There is not a time I can remember when she wasn’t wearing an apron and enveloped in a cloud of flour.
Pies were my grandmother’s métier. Banana crème, chocolate, lemon meringue, mince, rhubarb, cherry, apple, peach; whatever fruit was in season was destined to end up in a pie.
My grandparent’s farm was bordered on two sides by streams. In the back of the house, beyond the meticulous control of my grandmother’s gardening, Himalayan blackberry bushes grew tangled and wild. They towered over the streams in dense thickets of barbed vines. Their white blossoms were massed with honeybees in the spring. By late summer their large, shiny berries, the color of midnight, attracted not only honeybees, but yellow jacket wasps and spiders.
Picking blackberries was no easy feat. My grandmother would don a pair of hip waders, tucking her dress (No proper lady ever wore pants!) safely away. A wide-brimmed hat was on her head, protecting her against the late summer sun overhead. She carried with her a stepladder to help reach the higher berries. I would tag along behind, carrying a smaller bowl. I would slip off my sneakers and roll up my cotton capris in order to wade next to her.
Where the vines were thickest, the stream ran deeper and slower. Skipper bugs danced on the water, away from dragonflies. I could see minnows and trout skittering from their hiding places, disturbed by our presence in their home.
My grandmother would wade in, the bucket strapped to her belt, well-worn leather gloves on her hands. She would position the step ladder among the peckish vines, making sure its legs were securely placed before climbing to the higher clusters of berries. I picked the berries I could reach easily from the lower branches. The fatter berries were so ripe they would bleed juice as I pulled them from their stems.
We would pick and talk, our voices mingling with the rippling stream and the lowing of dairy cows from the farm across the road. I would tell her about the owl in the barn, the swallowtail butterfly I’d seen and the best place to catch trout. She would tell me where she had seen muskrats, which neighbor had baby bunnies or foals we could visit, and how she would fry up my trout for breakfast if I caught them early enough.
Soon, we would have filled the bucket to overflowing. We’d gather our belongings and retrace our steps back to the house, where we carefully washed the dust from the freshly-picked berries.
When it was time to make the pie, she transformed into a tiny, wizened chemist mixing and stirring from memory and practice the Crisco shortening, butter, salt, water and flour that would become the flaky crust. She rolled the dough thinly and evenly on a wooden board and would pop a blackberry in her mouth, testing the sweetness, before measuring just the right amount of sugar to add. Butter and cornstarch would follow then the top crust, brushed with milk and sprinkled with sugar.
When the late afternoon sun headed towards the western horizon, a low mist would form in the distance, refracting rainbows. While the pie was baking, I might have headed towards the barn to check on a new litter of kittens or run my hands down a horse’s velvet muzzle. I might have gone to the garden, pulled a new carrot from the soil, brushed off the dirt with my hands as best I could and eaten it right there, as my grandmother had shown me. Standing in the sun’s yolk-like glow, all was right in the world and we would be having pie for dessert.
My grandmother is long gone. As is my own mother. Today, I am a grandmother who makes a mean potato salad and deviled eggs. But I’m not a great baker. I order blackberry pie whenever I can. It’s Heaven on a plate, warm and sweet. The meaty, indigo nectar unlocks my memories: The smell of fresh cut hay; the cool feel of stream water on a hot day; the dark chocolate color of the soil; the buzz of cicadas; the splash of a rainbow trout; the call of a starling; My cherished memories are the secret ingredients of my grandmother’s pies. And this is why I must have pie.