My mother is this miraculous kind of being. She knows how to love and how to bake. When she puts these two skill sets together magic happens. This year her apple - cranberry pie was perfect. She can tell you the drama behind the particular pie another time, herself. She can claim it was a little dry because of this unspecified drama (OK she had to rinse off the wrong spice she grabbed from the shelf). No matter what my mom says, I know the pie was perfect.
From the slightly sugared deep golden crust that was pressed evenly along the edge of the pan, to the ratio and sweetness of apple to berries, the taste was light in all the right places, rich in all the others. When my mother puts love into ingredients, tiny little miracles happen around the table and house. Smiles grow broader, chatter turns into easy laughter around my mother’s deserts. I’ve tried this trick myself, and it works.
What we often call mindfulness, my mother calls prayer. It’s a type of meditation that goes into each pie at Thanksgiving, and into all her culinary efforts. My mother prays without even making it a thing. She was raised to be good and humble and to be connected to the bigger picture of life. She was raised to embrace dignity in all things, and she does. In her food that dedication to love is never-ending and it connects her early life in an island village, to her modern life now. Her love is a bottomless ingredient that she carries with her. It goes by many names and exists in many styles, but we all have this ingredient somewhere deep inside our internal cabinets: even on tough days, even in the midst of difficult years.
Thanksgiving kicks off a season of family traditions and cultural gathering. People of different beliefs assimilate, reconstruct and reinvent according to their current thoughts and needs. The names at the table change. The empty seats get filled by time. The recipes may remain quite the same, but they may not. Each year the tables evolve due to the year’s harvest, and things like supply chain availability. Nothing stays exactly the same in life, and so people like my mother find their own foundation. They give it all up to God. They plug into the nature, the moment, the pull of stewardship. They do complex engineering of pies and cakes, and in the process initiate some of the same engineering in people. These people create the potential for optimal states of togetherness through flour and sugar, through fruits and spices.
This may seem like an appreciation post, pure and simple, and in some ways it is. It’s also a celebration post, of making it to another set of holidays. More importantly though, this is a post about the nature of systems, and the way that simple acts can elevate our lives and the lives of others. These simple acts of elevation can push back the overwhelm and the pain of everyday life. They can push back on the material selfishness, the narrow focus on momentary pleasure, bringing people back into awareness that true love does exist. Words can say, “I love you” but actions, even those that we think are imperfect, can change more than we realize.