Ode to Pumpkin Pie

I’m up early on Thanksgiving morning, like the woman in the nursery rhyme, — Dame get up and bake your pies! It’s time to prepare filling for the pumpkin pie, which has always been my favorite pie. Throughout my childhood, Mom made pumpkin pie for the holidays. She had perfected her recipe so that the custard filling was permeated with pumpkin taste but didn’t taste like a vegetable plus it had a melt-in-the mouth texture that was delicate and soft, never rubbery. Oftentimes times I would help her make it. She would get out the Sunbeam stand mixer and we’d start mixing eggs, milk, sugar, salt and spices in the bowl.

Mother’s pie etched a memory on my tongue and in my heart. Making pumpkin pie was how I learned to crack an egg, measure cinnamon on a measuring spoon, grate fresh nutmeg and realize that although vanilla smells wonderful — by itself, it tastes awful. Once assembled, the pumpkin custard tasted raw but the aroma was promising. I’d watch the pie bake through the window on the oven door, listening to the click-click-click of the timer count down to the time when we’d check doneness by sticking a clean knife into the center of the pie. The pie was done when the the knife came out clean.

During the fall of my freshman year of college, I remember seeing all the pumpkins piled high at the local markets and featured prominently as decorations on porches of the beautiful old homes in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was a pumpkin growing area. We didn’t have so many pumpkins in Kansas and the ones we had were mainly imported from elsewhere and used to make jack-o-lanterns. Walking past all those pumpkins around town made me homesick for Mom’s pie. I was living away from my family for the first time in my life and although I was enjoying my independence, I also missed the familiar, taken for granted comforts of home. To this day I recall strolling through campus and feeling the dissonance between what I’d expected from college life and the unfamiliar circumstances I was just beginning to navigate. In those moments that I acknowledged to myself that I was missing home, my mouth filled with the remembered taste and texture on my tongue of Mom’s warm pumpkin pie served with a dollop of freshly whipped cream.

Through the years a good pumpkin pie, or squash or sweet potato pie has remained my favorite pie. I still use Mom’s recipe, although I’ve adapted it to reflect what my taste buds want now. This morning I’m going prepare the pie filling for the oven while I listen to a Chopin playlist. Mom always comes to me when I hear Chopin’s music — she loved playing and listening to his lyrical melodies for piano. Together in time and space, I’m going to make another pie with Mom.

Sally Singingtree, November 26, 2020