On, In and Around Mondays: The Impossible Ritual
I peel in a circle, always. Long spirals fall, make us smile.
Apples, cinnamon, sugar, lemon juice. Then the dough, rolled and placed into a blue stoneware pie plate. I pile the apples inside it, impossibly high (this is how I learned it from my mother).
My Eldest works beside me. Besides the apple filling, we also do cherry, blueberry, pecan, and this year raspberry to please my sister (who I haven't seen on Thanksgiving in years).
In about four hours' time, it is finished: the five-pie outlay. I do this every year. It is more than we need, like the apples piled impossibly high.
Part of me says no to this display of abundance. And that is why I must engage in this ritual.
Like the wine berries in the woods that we pick in June (and never come to the end of), these pies are more than my little world needs. I remind myself that, soon enough, Lent and fasting will come, like the woods empty of berries. And that will be a different time, also essential to our understanding of life.
But for today, it is feasting. I want my girls to learn this from me, their mother.
Pie photos by L.L. Barkat.
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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.
If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)
Labels: family stories, On in and Around Mondays, Thanksgiving
posted by L.L. Barkat at 8:00 AM
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