Pies

I had a dream with my Grandma last night. I was going to visit her. We both knew she was dying, and this would be our last visit together (in real life, she died in early December last year). I was preparing for the visit, searching desperately for one last thing we could do together. Crochet a prayer shawl? Probably not enough time for that. I got a phone call from my dad asking, “do you want me to pick you up a bushel of tomatoes so you can make sauce with her?” No, too messy. I was fiddling around with canning jars and pickled vegetables, knowing I was wasting precious time. But I couldn’t let go of that need to fit one more thing in. And then I woke up, without ever actually getting to the last visit.

It was a powerful dream in its likeness to real life. My grandma taught me a lot about what it means to be a woman in this world. She and I (and many of the women in our family) are earnest about learning to make things for our family. In taking time and care to create something that was not there before and sharing with others, our love is transferred through the physical object; whether it be food or clothing or otherwise.

I don’t know if it is the upcoming anniversary of her death, the kind of work that I am doing right now in offering spiritual care at the end of life as a chaplain, or the way covid changes our lives so quickly before plans can even be made. But something has brought up this need in me to create and share with the ones I love. I woke up from the dream all prepped and ready to make the Thanksgiving pies; ones I would take pride in with ingredients that grew in our back yard.

But the dream is also a bit of a warning.

A piece of advice perhaps from my Grandma on the other side of the veil; to not let my desire to create something perfect get in the way of an opportunity to simply love on someone, in just the way they need it. Whether I’m baking pies, or parenting, or working as a chaplain, if I’m focused on the product of my labor rather than the relationship at hand, I might miss the subtlety of what is truly needed (like a last visit with a loved one).

The warning helped me enter into the pie baking ritual in a slightly different way. I didn’t measure ingredients. I remembered the tree out back when it was full of cherries. I tasted the warm June day when I harvested them. I remembered the smell of my grandma’s kitchen as pies were baking, where I was wrapped in the anticipation of a big family meal.

I will take the finished products to gatherings this Thanksgiving, and I’ll offer them as a symbol of my beautiful imperfect unfinished love.