is a single mama in the city, super-savvy editor, writer, video host and shameless shoe whore.
Heart in the middle
Wednesday, November 25, 2009 We got home last night and both of us were exhausted. I'd been running all day -- around the park, with work, trying to fit a week's worth of to-dos into two too-short days. Lil E had been running all day also -- around the playground, on the obstacle course in his classroom, leaping from the car to the front porch to my dad's lap. But there were pies to bake and in a tradition that goes back to when I was a little girl with my grandmother in the kitchen, it was our job.
It is one time of the year that I don't mind cliches, and so I poured a glass of wine, prepped my ingredients, pushed up Lil E's sleeves and set about our labor of love. Lil E and my dad cranked the apple peeler, my mom dug through cabinets for corn syrup and mixing bowls, kept me company and conferred with me on the details of each recipe.
I brought my favorite measuring cups and spoons, but we used tools my mother now keeps that my grandmother once used. The pie pans and pastry mixer and cookie sheets are worn with decades worth of use, and it always makes me feel like I am doing a better job by placing my hands and dough on the same handles and surfaces my mother and grandmother did.
We made apple, a favorite for me and my dad, and pecan for my other grandmother and aunt, and a chocolate truffle experiment at the request of the small child. As much as I love those hours putting pies together, it got late, Lil E got tired, and I felt rushed to get home and finish work left on my laptop screen.
And so the pies were not perfection. Not that they ever are, but they are not as pretty or symmetrical or tidy as I would like them to be. I wanted to linger over the fluting and even out the pecans, but my time and energy was drained. I needed to be done. Just before I slipped them into the oven, I put all those expectations aside and carved a heart into the top crust of the apple pie. Nothing fancy, very uneven. I just felt there needed to be a heart there in the center.
Hours later, Lil E was sound asleep and I was wrapping up work and the movie "The Waitress" came to mind, the one with Keri Russell as the diner server who escapes her small town existence and unhappy marriage by baking pies. It wasn't so much the storyline or many crazy recipes she makes that crept into my thoughts as the song she sings throughout the movie. I needed to find it right then, felt compelled to hear the lyrics to the song that I knew I would recognize when I heard the first few bars.
As soon as I pressed play, I knew I'd found it. It's lovely, simple, perhaps a little too sweet. What got me, though, were the unexpected lines in the middle of the chorus, words I hadn't remembered at all.
Right there, after the familiar
Baby, don't you cry
Gonna make a pie
was nestled
Gonna make a pie with a heart in the middle
and followed by
Baby, don't be blue
Gonna make for you
and once again
Gonna make a pie with a heart in the middle
The poetry of it is not complex and is cliche. It is that time of year, though, where those words are welcome, when the hands working all working all kinds of dishes come into contact are inspired by much more than a recipe or exquisitely peeled apple or the smell of sage, when the only way to set aside the distraction of time and demands and family complications is to just stop for a moment and make a place for the heart.
It's all a big slice of sappiness, I know this. I choose to believe that the song came to me for a reason, as a reminder, as something to sing when I forget how unimportant precise measurements, prettiness and perfection really are.
Listen. Enjoy. Have a blessed Thanksgiving.
Reader Comments (2)
Oh, Marcia. Thank you. This reminds me of how many times your words brought the laughter that I so needed in that moment. Thank you for that as well.