My Mother's Hands

I was going to a Friendsgiving dinner, and volunteered to make a pumpkin pie. I made a pumpkin pie from scratch one other time, and it turned out perfectly, with little hand-cut leaves adorning it and a good crust. Another time, I made chocolate pie and the crust was overworked and tough.

I didn't have a pie tin.

It was time to call in reinforcements.

My mum makes the best pie, ever. I've talked a lot about the Homemade Pie Kitchen in Lousiville, Kentucky-- they have a Dutch caramel apple pie that is divine, but it will not outdo my mum's pie (ask Shelley-- she craves Mum's pie all year).

The crust is flaky and a perfect golden shade, with crimped edges. The pumpkin filling is not overpowering. She puts pie crust leaves on top, adorned with cinnamon and sugar (something she used to free hand but now uses a cookie cutter for-- why not?). She did this before the cutesy fads of Pinterest, Food Network, or Youtube and Facebook videos made everyone who wasn't putting on an episode of Martha Stewart Living for each meal feel somehow inferior.

I was at my mum's yesterday, borrowing a pie tin and expecting some guidance on making a pie, and she ended up making it for me. Gently moving me aside, she mixed the crust, not overworking it, and then rolled it out with an old wooden rolling pin. As she began her technique for pinching the edges to form her tell-tale look, I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture. She asked if it was to remember the technique, and I said no.

"I have peasant hands," she said. Totally deadpan, and I cracked up. She has small hands with little fingers, and those hands aren't the lily white hands of someone who has never done any work. They are, however, something more.

Her hands are the hands that tirelessly brushed and braided my hair until I could manage it on my own.

They are the hands that held mine as I learned to walk, write, feed myself.

Her hands are the hands that made dinner every night, and baked hundreds of cookies every Christmas as a way to stay close to her mother, who I never met.

Her hands created I Dream of Jeannie's hat for my Halloween costume out of a sour cream container, or magic wands for me, my sister, and the kids in the neighborhood with pencils, ribbon, and Pringles lids.

Her hands made magic with money that was barely there in order to feed us, clothe us, house us, and still give us Christmas presents and birthday cakes and little things here and there.

Her hands folded together to pray and teach me to do the same-- to ask for grace, to be thankful for what we had, to bless the people in our lives.

Her hands reached out and felt my forehead when I wasn't feeling well, checking for a fever before whipping up chicken soup with dumplings.

Her hands clapped hardest for me when I walked across the stage to get my diplomas, particularly the first master's one. She was the only one there for me that day, but I got that degree as much for her as for me-- it was our moment, anyway, one we could both be proud of, and when I saw her beaming and clapping for me, no one else mattered anyway.

So yes, her hands are small and "peasanty" as she says, but they are beautiful and tell a million stories and will tell a million more. Oh, and the pie turned out great too.