Nurture Principles

I think the most was 21 pies.
She presided over each and every one of them.

Compared to my mother’s side of the family, it was easy to say that my father’s side of the family was large.  Not in a portly way (though that could be said for a few of us) but in a plentiful way.  My mom was an only child, and an orphan of sorts after her father and mother both died (in 1966 and 1991, respectively).  On the other hand, my father was the oldest child of seven in a family that believed in reproduction.

Thanksgiving dinner on my father’s side of the family could have been a logistical nightmare for most people, but it was when my grandmother (my father’s stepmother) was her most brilliant.  She managed to find space for everyone around the table (whether you were actually in the dining room or not was another question–the kids table being halfway into the formal living room).  She could feed everyone with only four burners and a stove.  My grandfather would carve the turkey in the kitchen (he so loved his electric knife) and then triumphantly present it as we all settled in, passing serving dishes around clockwise, and began the serious business of eating.  Every member of my family waddled away from that table with a full belly.

While some would go off in search of a place to endure their food coma, others were outside playing basketball or tossing around a football.  Some stayed inside and watched the tv.  I usually strayed no further from my grandmother than her apron string.  I would help her wash the dinner plates and set up the large coffee percolator.  In these moments, she would catch her first short break after many long hours of cooking and days of preparation.

At the appointed time, and from every corner of the kitchen, pies would appear and then be moved on to the dining room table.  We would be called back to the table once again to begin round two.

Ma would stand at her place setting (by the doorway to the kitchen) and ask everyone what pie they wanted.  Her contributions were usually cherry and apple pie.  My father would bring a tart apple pie and a mincemeat pie (his father’s favorite).  There’d usually be a store-bought pumpkin or sweet potato pie.  In later years we added the Gobble Pie (a monstrosity that you needed a chisel to break into) and the Irish Whiskey Cream Pie.  No matter the pie, Ma’s methodology was the same:  your pie would not be served to you until the entire slice of pie had been carefully and lovingly moved from the dish to the plate.  If Ma felt like a single bite had lingered in the dish, she would nervously laugh as she recalled the plate and make sure that bite made it safely to you.

She did this for each and every person, for each and every pie, finally serving her self last.

I wanted to tell you all this story for a reason.  Sometimes we get way too wrapped up in the food that is being served at Thanksgiving.  We think it is the only time of the year where turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, yams, etc., intersect.  We eat as if these foods exist for a finite time and will be gone forever or for at least another year.  We eat like there is no tomorrow and sometimes regret that decision.

But I promise you, the food will always be there.

As her Alzheimer’s progressed, gatherings like this became fewer and further in-between.  People moved away, people grew apart.  Things got complicated.  Ma passed away in March.

I couldn’t bear to to think of her in any other way but at that table serving pie.  For my grandmother it wasn’t about being the perfect hostess or the ideal matriarch.  It wasn’t about that cherry covered in red goop making it into your stomach.  It was about all of us being there at the same time, in the same place.  It was her having every single person she loved in that one room and her being able to show how much she cared about them by providing a nutritious meal.  That broken off piece of crust making it on to your plate it was her way of showing you that she was paying attention to you and your needs in that moment.

Today as my family starts to make new traditions, I want to be mindful of these old traditions.  I want the focus to be on caring for one another (and taking care of myself) versus trying to stuff myself to the gills.  I also want to remember the lesson that my grandmother showed me each and every day I had the honor of spending with her — that for as much as it can be a noun, love is truly its best as an action verb.