Day 620, March 14, 2022

Taste the Innocence

Every March 14th, a friend of mine used to throw a pie/pi party, which doubled as a pie contest. The last pie party, I brought my own entry, something from my childhood. My parents were intrepid travelers, and when my father went on tour, my mother often would accompany him. Somewhere in France she picked up the idea of a thin crust rolled out flat like a pizza, topped with jam and fresh fruit. It was delightfully simple, but like many simple things, delicious. It had all the best things about pie, a crisp and flaky crust, the true flavors of strawberries, blueberries, and slices of apple arranged in a mandala of flavor. It had just the right sweetness and tart from the jam, but none of the messy syrupy mess of a deep dish pie. Mostly, when someone mentions pie, this is what comes to mind. 

My mother stopped making these pies somewhere along the way. The world became more cosmopolitan, perhaps, and simple approximations gave way to more extravagant confections one would pick up at the bakery in Brookline. Or maybe, it was the gluten thing. In any case, the French pies faded along with the roast duck, red bean filled tteok, and other recipes lost to time, changing diets, gown up kids.

My version of my mom’s French pie didn’t win a ribbon. Among all the varieties of apple, blueberry, strawberry rhubarb, cream, and other more traditional pies, it remained forsaken, and not nearly as decimated by all the pie eaters. We didn’t know it, but this would be the last pie party, at least the last pie party open to the public. The whole thing had gotten too large and out of hand, it was like a high school keg party, except everyone carried their own spoon. The floors were all muddy from the spring thaw, and their yard, and all up and down the street, paper plates fluttered in the breeze. 

The other thing I think about, when I think about pie, is an antique mall my mother took me to. It was a large forsaken department store turned into hundreds of antique dealer stalls. It had the feel of an open air market, only it was under an industrial setting, like the inside of a Walmart cleared of everything except the lights hanging from the ceiling. While my mother worked her way through the intricate aisles, I hovered around a table with erotic netsuke, which I peered at sideways, like trying to look at the covers of girly magazines in the drugstore, and then, when I worried the dealer was catching on, I would retreat to the pie station where the church ladies served warm apple pie by the slice. Over the course of the day, I must have eaten at least a whole pie by myself in between all my ogling. The grandmas all started cheering when they saw me returning for another slice, my eyes bugging and face flushed from what I had witnessed out of the corner of my eye.

Never have I tasted an apple pie, so good.

Shadows on perhaps the last snow of the season.