The decision has been made with regards to pie. There will be 3. And they will be full sized. As cute as those little pies are I worry that they will be . . . fussy to make and more challenging than just following my usual pie formula. So, later today I will make 2 sets of pie dough instead of my usual 5. And tomorrow I will make a pumpkin, a mincemeat, and a cranberry pecan. In the spirit of pie, I found this poem to share with you. I think the title couldn’t be more appropriate because pie = perfection!

Perfect for Any Occasion

1.

Pies have a reputation.
And it’s immediate—no talk of potential

Regarding a pie.  It’s good
Or it isn’t, but mostly it is—sweet, very sweet

Right then, right there, blue and red.
It can’t go to junior college,

Work hard for the grades,
Work two jobs on the side.

It can’t slowly build a reputation
And a growing client base.

A pie gets one chance
And knows it, wearing as makeup

Those sparkling granules of sugar,
As a collar those diamond cutouts

Bespeaking Fair Day, felicity, contentment.
I tell you everything is great, says a pie,

Great, and fun, and fine.
And you smell nice, too, someone says.

A full pound of round sound, all ahh, all good.
Pies live a life of applause.

2.

But then there are the other pies.
The leftover pies.  The ones

Nobody chooses at Thanksgiving.
Mincemeat?  What the hell is that? people ask,

Pointing instead at a double helping of Mr.
“I-can-do-no-wrong” pecan pie.

But the unchosen pies have a long history, too.
They have plenty of good stories, places they’ve been—

They were once fun, too—
But nobody wants to listen to them anymore.

Oh sure, everybody used to love lard,
But things have changed, brother—things have changed.

That’s never the end of the story, of course.
Some pies make a break for it—

Live underground for a while,
Doing what they can, talking fast,

Trying to be sweet pizzas, if they’re lucky.
But no good comes of it.  Nobody is fooled.

A pie is a pie for one great day.  Last week,
It was Jell-O.  Tomorrow, it’ll be cake.

---

Originally published in The Dangerous Shirt (Copper Canyon Press, 2009). Copyright © by Alberto Ríos.

Yesterday was Mother’s Day and I saw a lot of stuff on social media about it. I saw pictures of moms with their kids. I saw gifts that moms received. I saw brunch celebrations and bouquets of flowers. I read some beautiful words about celebrating moms, remembering moms, honoring the women in our lives who aren’t our moms but who inspire us and raise us up. It was all pretty wonderful and made what can be a bittersweet day for me quite tolerable.

You know what else made it a bomb Mother’s Day?

Teaching my girlie Hannah to bake an apple pie.

To be perfectly honest, I was not excited about baking a pie on Mother’s Day. It’s . . . work. There’s the crust and the peeling and slicing of the apples. There’s the mess and clean up and timing of it all. But I did it gladly. I did it because Hannah asked me if I would. Because Hannah thought this would be a great way of spending time together on Mother’s Day. Because it was a way of remembering and honoring my mom, teaching her granddaughter how to do this thing that she taught me to do when I was about Hannah’s age. Because Hannah sees me as an expert when it comes to baking pie and because she knows I learned from my mom and she wants to be the third generation of women in our family who make really great pie for the people they love.

Because, despite my reluctance to do anything even remotely like work on Mother’s Day, I love my daughter. And it’s the love that makes all the work and mess and time worth the effort.

And maybe also because we got to have a really great pie for dessert. My daughter’s first pie. I’m a proud mommy.

I hope you all had a wonderful day yesterday celebrating the moms in your life. And I hope it included pie.