The year we were all locked inside was the same year my Pop Pop’s glioblastoma re-emerged from its dormancy. It was also the year I started making mini pies again.
The Babycakes non-stick coated pie maker is no bigger than a textbook. It’s light and portable and makes the most beautiful mini pies you’ve ever seen. Until 2020, it was living in the basement of my parents’ Fanwood, NJ home. In March of 2020, I found myself living back in that home, too.
There are a few things to know about making these mini pies: unlike regular pies, you have to cook the filling separately before cooking the whole pie; if you lose the pie-cutter tool (like I did), a standard glass makes a nice substitute and is roughly the same size as the lower crust; buying premade Trader Joe’s pie dough is just as good and way easier than making homemade pie dough.
There is one thing to know about glioblastomas: they’re lethal.
In 2020, we were in uncharted terrority. All Covid advice was clear -- avoid any unnecessary contact with elderly relatives. But there was nothing about how to handle when your favorite and only grandfather was suddenly in his last year of life. Could we see him? Should we see him? Was there a point of isolating if we knew he wouldn't live past this pandemic?
So I did the one thing I could think of.
I took out the Babycakes non-stick coated pie maker for the first time since high school.
And I made him pies.
Lemon blueberry or apple; lattice tops or pinched edges with four careful slits. I experimented with different kinds of apples, slightly different sugar amounts, frozen versus fresh blueberries.
These pies --
Pop Pop starts seeing phantoms.
strangely --
Pop Pop gets lost in his own home.
were forgiving.
Pop Pop starts talking to people who aren’t in the room.
Every pie I made was perfect. I could do no wrong. Pop Pop scarfed them down.
After work, on weekends, whenever I had the time or energy, I would make a batch of mini pies. Pop Pop had a vision of commercializing my pies and selling them in grocery stores. He always said I had a CEO brain — that I was a tiger who sometimes didn’t realize it. That I should be using my voice and my writing and my drive to be at the frontlines of an enviable career.
I couldn’t even make him a pie without him pushing me toward something bigger, toward success.
"Sari dear -- " he said to me one day over the phone. "I sent you an email about your pies. Did you get it?"
We were at the point where we were considering taking his laptop away from him. He would spend hours cursing at it, slapping the table, allowing it to pull him into bouts of frustration and confusion. An engineer, reduced to this, was hard to stomach.
I hadn't gotten the email. He hadn't sent it. Maybe he hadn't even written it — we didn't know.
"My email's been weird lately, I don't think I saw it," I told him. A tender lie. It was all I had. "What did it say?"
"Oh, God, I know I sent it. Jeez." Pause. "It was about your pies." Pause. "How happy they make me."
This was a man who taught me ping pong, math, music, negotiating. A man who could fix any computer bug with ease but was most fixated on sitting down with me to understand my fiction. A man who wasn't afraid to turn to me for wisdom when we lost my beloved grandmother, putting a pan and an egg into my 14-year-old hands, saying: show me how. No one had ever made me feel more able.
"I'm so glad you like the pies," I said. "No one else in our family eats them -- it's just us!"
He let out an unscathed laugh.
"They're crazy," he said. He then mumbled something nonsensical. I could hear his caregiver gently turning his attention back to the phone, explaining that there was no one else in the room, quickly followed by his frustration as he realized what had happened.
"Damn! God! Damn it!"
"Are they scary?" I asked him, leaning on my desk and picturing the room full of ghosts. "The phantoms?"
He thought for a moment. "No," he said. "They're not scary. In fact, one of them kind of looks like you."
He died peacefully in the middle of the night while I sat in our dark living room, staring at the chair he used to sit in.
The Babycakes non-stick coated pie maker went back into my parents’ basement.
During the pandemic, as my grandfather regressed and regressed, I wasn't really writing. It was the first time in my life when I felt like I had nothing to say. Or maybe it was that the world -- and my personal life -- were in a kind of turmoil that was too fanged for the balloon of creativity. My proverbial typewriter was in the basement closet.
And when Pop Pop died, everything went truly silent.
I dragged my feet through the sludge of his absence. Nothing felt real.
Seven months later, my mother sent me a text in the middle of work that shot a jolt of electricity through me.
"I found the email Pop Pop wrote to you about your pies. It was in his draft folder. Do you want to see it?"
Did I want to see it?!
I left the office in a daze, stumbling home through what appeared to be a tilting Central Park. It had been the longest I'd ever gone without hearing from my grandfather. And I was about to hear from him one last time.
Admittedly, it took me a long time to open that email. I knew I was going to read it too quickly, memorize it instantly, and the newness of his words would disintegrate as quickly as they had landed. Eventually, I looked.
"Subject Line: thanks!!!!!
Sarah, these pies have been islands of pure joy in a sea of torment!
If you’re ever in the mood to discuss commercializing these lovely creations, I’d be glad to do it."
Through the emptiness -- the still inbox where my grandfather once emailed daily, the silent phone he once called, the empty driveway from which he'd wave with a smile that could span an ocean -- there was something. Movement. Space he was once again taking up. His paradoxical reminder that an engineer can learn to analyze fiction, a sensitive introvert can learn to be a strong leader, and that someone can be both gone and here at the same time.
I latched onto it like I had no choice.
And I found myself starting to internalize a voice. A guiding voice. A phantom's voice. A grandfather’s voice.
You’re a tiger.
I take three apples from the fridge.
There’s a big world out there.
It’s Rosh Hashanah -- the new year, a time to eat apples and honey and think about the areas of your life that need to change.
You’re a writer.
I peel the apples with steady, certain hands.
You should be writing about it.
I’m not making a pie. I’m making an apple crumble, one that I will eat alone because Pop Pop was the only other member of my family who liked these kinds of desserts. Because everyone else is crazy.
Healing isn’t linear.
But this is the first apple I’ve peeled in nine months.
And sometimes, you have to cook the filling before you cook the pie.