Route 153

The Pie That Was Baked by Mistake October 30, 2009

My parents are coming to visit me and my sister for a long weekend, and yesterday I was out running some preparatory errands. I wanted a pie—an apple pie, maybe, if I could find one that looked good. Apple (in my humble opinion) can be trickier than other pies.

On a whim, on my way to the gym, I stopped at T’s. T is a most excellent piemaker. In fact, T makes the best coconut cream pie I have ever had. Her business has moved several times and taken on several incarnations over the years for a variety of reasons. You used to be able to go and pick a pie out of the refrigerator or order one made, but now (I was pretty sure) if you wanted a pie, you had to order it. As the gym is practically across from T’s, it was worth checking out to be sure.

I asked if she had any pies. No, pies must be ordered. But, she said hesitatingly, I do have one pie that I baked by mistake.

Baked by mistake? I, who have never even attempted a crust on my own, could not imagine circumstances under which something like this could possibly occur.

When the woman called, I thought she wanted the pie today, T explained. But she was making an order for Thanksgiving.

What kind is it? I asked.

Strawberry rhubarb.

Hmmmm. I like strawberry rhubarb. I imagine T makes a good strawberry rhubarb. Is it for sale?

Sure.

So now I am the proud owner of a pie baked by mistake. It’s not the pie I was planning to have. But it’s found a home.

Mrs. S (for me, 2006–2009, when he suddenly tells me that he) October 29, 2009

has left the ether
“definitively” and I’m
inconsolable

indefinitely
I rush to hope, but no—it’s
definitively

What Mali Said, October 15, 2009

in her October 11 post: “It’s one of the reasons I read the blogs I do. They are all particularly good at appreciating the moment, about celebrating the simple things in life.”

Indeed. This may be why I am reading you, dear blog friends. This may be why I try to keep blogging—to remind myself of simplicities. To be aware of a moment.

This may be why I am writing nothing of late.

Mine is not actually a complicated life, but it seems to have decided to play one on TV. I feel inefficient. Day after day—with the exception of one recent deliciously productive morning—I can’t focus well enough to accomplish what I somehow believe could be accomplished. It’s frustrating, and in this frustration I am definitely not taking enough time to breathe in the simple. When I do, I exhale quickly, and it’s over.

It’s been a beautiful autumn, and I’ve noticed. Don’t think I haven’t. I’ve had a couple of wonderful weekends, too, but at their end, I’ve been too tasked to know what to say about them.

Perhaps the cat’s got my tongue. I hope that said cat is The Danforth’s Alfie, and that she will either scratch me awake or ghostwrite some Indigo Bunting posts.

xxx October 11, 2009

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

—Edna St. Vincent Millay