Do All Pies Go to Heaven? (How to Love Thanksgiving No Matter What)
I am not at home this Thanksgiving. Nor am I with family or friends hosting a giant feast. It’s just the two of us this year. I don’t know how to cook a thanksgiving meal for two so we’re eating out somewhere a little bit lame (the one place in a hundred mile radius that wasn’t fully booked!)
I’m not even sure turkey is on the menu. But there had better be pie! Especially because—not only is it Thanksgiving on the 23rd, but it’s also my birthday. Save the cake---I only want pie.
In my Thanksgiving kitchen, there are usually at least six kinds of pie crowning their very own table: apple, pumpkin cheesecake, rhubarb-cherry, chocolate chess, sweet potato and chocolate-pecan and whatever other delightful concoction comes through the door. I set them on gilded chargers, so they sit haloed, as they should. For what is more heavenly than the (humble) pie?
We enjoy this pie harvest because Thanksgiving at my house is always a potluck affair. But potlucks are risky. What if we end up with six pumpkin pies? Or what if my friend’s newest invention, peanutbutter-crusted rhubarb custard pie is, ummm, terrible? Hence the word “luck.” I never quite know what will come through the door. One year a dear woman brought a chopped salad made of iceburg lettuce and Cheese-Its, dressed in mayonnaise. Another year someone brought homemade cranberry sauce but they forgot the---sugar. I myself have contributed unintended turkey jerky and the world’s gluiest mashed potatoes, as two of my many culinary crimes.
(At such times, we could rename the potluck “potlack.” And if the offerings are really good, we could call it a “potlick.”)
After dinner, I’m ready. As the pie table is swarmed with dessert-goers, pie-servers flashing, whipped cream fluttering, I take my watchful place beside it. Chaos will surely ensue were it not for my careful ministrations. Someone has to fix that uneven edge of chocolate pie. Does anyone see how the rhubarb-cherry is oozing over its borders? Who else will neaten the ragged off-angles of the pumpkin cheesecake? Didn’t God create the cosmos with universal natural laws to save us from randomness and entropy? Are we not to be “repairers of the world?” With fork in hand, I’m fulfilling my created purpose.
