The Joy of Pie

The other day during one of our advisor/advisee lunches, my advisee Mu’umen smiled at me and said, “You know, Mr. John, of all the things I like about you, I think it is how much you enjoy food that is my favorite thing about you.”

The boy knows me well!

The occasion for the comment was a quasi-Thanksgiving meal on Tuesday, on the last “sit-down” meal of this term before exams swooped in and everyone would eat for a week in what we call “walk-through” meals. The chef and dining hall staff approximated a Thanksgiving meal for the students and advisors, and my advisees gamely tried things like stuffing and sweet potatoes. I love my advisees anyway—we six simply enjoy being together—and we love to talk about food, share food, laugh over food. (Other advisor/advisee groups are not as lucky and I heard some grumpiness about “Why do we have to have this stupid American food?” and “Who said we wanted to have an American Thanksgiving meal” and “That orange stuff is awful!” and also “Who would actually want to eat turkey????”)

So of course in Thanksgiving week, if you are far from your real home, a wistfulness creeps in. I have only been home for Thanksgiving once in the five years of this Jordan project, so it puts me in mind of things Cincinnati and New York. And, well food. And when I think of Thanksgiving, in the top 5 food things I think about, I think about pie.

Pie has been on my mind this week in a wonderful way. (Is it ever that far from one’s mind??) On Wednesday night this week, I invited over dear friends Reem and Julianne for mushroom soup and other things fresh from the London trip (like cheeses…yum). Reem knows me well—she eagerly offered to bring a pie for dessert. Oh, Reem—we need to have dinner more often! As always, the mood was light and fun and deep and important when we three get together and break it all down. But then came dessert. Reem made that pie. And it was a beauty. She made a peach pie (how did she know?? One of my Top 10 Favorites!! Oh, time for a little tangent: do you know the story of the joke my mother used to tell about my father and pie? When she did a “This Is Your Life” party for my dad, she had all these quiz questions about Kenny Leistler, and one question was…” ‘Ken Leistler only likes two kinds of pie…what are they??’ The answer: “hot and cold”! Well, our family friend Edna, who turned 94 this fall, always forgot that answer, and we would tease her going over to this veteran pie-baker’s house for dinner, “You know Edna, our father only likes two kinds of pie…I hope you made one of them!” Edna would dither and sputter and flutter and flither (a new word as of this moment) hoping she had guessed right, and then we would slay her with the monumental answer of “hot and cold!” Oh, see how these pies give my mind a flight of fancy!! Back to Reem and her peach pie…) and it was a beaut. Oh, I think I already said that. Well, she had made a flaky crust, and you know how a good flaky crust just takes those flecks of butter and just enough sugar…oh another strange allusion—do you remember the 30 Rock episode where Tracy Morgan’s character loved the cornbread so much he wanted to go out and marry it…well, this peach pie was a beaut.

Maybe I like pie so much because of all the gastronomic things I like to make, I don’t attempt pie much and so I appreciate it. Maybe I like pie so much because my mother was an intrepid pie-maker. She eschewed cakes for the most part and concentrated her efforts on supremely great pies. Meringue pies stunning! Berry pies, and, yes, she made a ribbon-worthy peach pie. Maybe I like pie so much because it takes time and commitment and I love things that require investment and labor and then have all the simple wonders of butter and sugar and…okay blog-writing is not supposed to be so mouth-watering.

So Thanksgiving morning (a work day for us) I get a call from my friend Randa—she has an apple pie for me! She knew Thanksgivings were hard for the Americans away from home, so she wanted me to feel some of the love and care of home…Randa—well, pie can do that, can’t it?!

Reem had tendered an invitation to her family’s home in Amman for Thanksgiving dinner, and even though I would sadly miss the faculty pot-luck Thanksgiving meal, being with a real family on that day beats almost anything. Reem’s mother and father have lived in Georgia, in the United States, for a long time, and just this fall moved back for awhile to Jordan to be with Reem’s grandmother, her sweet and feisty 90-year old Tateh. So Reem’s mother and father know of Thanksgivings.

Julianne and I come over to Reem’s family’s house, and the mother is putting the finishing touches on a splendid meal. She has a schedule on the refrigerator of when to get everything done—ahhh…a woman after my own heart—and has it all mapped out. Soon the guests arrive—Reem’s aunts and family friends for decades spill into the apartment. The dishes spill out of the kitchen, the two kinds of stuffing, an American-style and an Arab-style stuffing, broccoli salad, beets, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, and a beautiful turkey. We gather round and hold hands, and Reem’s father offers a stirring prayer. He thanks God for our blessings and abundance and gratitude for flourishing lives. While I know really well only two other people in the room—Reem and Julianne—I am surrounded by a loving family and devoted friends and a sense of sincere thanks. It may not be my blood family, but in this moment of food and thanks, it fills the void. This is a family that has had to be peripatetic: they had to leave Palestine in 1948 and then they left Lebanon and many have left Jordan to America. But through it all, these ties of family and friends have obviously sustained them. In Cincinnati, at almost the exact same time, my large extended family was eating at Uncle Jack and Aunt Joy’s house (now she is a Thanksgiving cook of your dreams!) reveling in the same ties of family and friends, in awe too at the abundance and blessings.

I did good work at Reem’s mother’s house. I had thirds. And then came dessert. There was chocolate mousse cake and a pumpkin cheesecake and Arab sweets and a pumpkin pie. You know, Libby’s canned pumpkin really does fit the bill well…it wasn’t quite the American pumpkin pie, but maybe that’s just all right. I can still think about and long for that ideal pumpkin pie.

At the dinner I discovered all kinds of ties to my own peripatetic journey. One aunt had lived in Chicago, and I told her about when I lived there as a college junior, and I would take the bus right by her church, and we talked about the North shore of Chicago. Another friend lives in Charlotte, North Carolina part-time, and her church at one time met in the school where I taught in Charlotte; we talked about the explosion of activity and homes on the south side of Charlotte. Reem’s mother and I looked at her hymnal collection, and right there was the same hymnal that my family had used in my childhood in our church.

Another family friend wanted to ask me about the tradition of the US President pardoning a turkey at Thanksgiving time. She wondered if it went back to the beginning of our history. I don’t know when it started, but I guess it is much more modern, perhaps the 1930s or 1940s and certainly just a photo op really, but she was fascinated by the ceremony and the official pardon for the National Thanksgiving Turkey. I told her about the great episode of “The West Wing” that also goes over this strange tradition and the lighthearted jesting that must ensue as the President says something like, “Our guest of honor looks a little nervous. Nobody’s told him yet he’s getting a pardon.”

It was a delightful Thanksgiving. I have pie in the fridge and pie on my mind…which reminds me that the title of this blog could go another way as well. The Joy of Pie, could also be understood, by math-o-philes, as The Joy of Pi.

Speaking of math—a phrase rarely uttered by me—I heard a thrilling lesson the other day by a math teacher. On one of the professional development days that I plan, last Sunday, I asked a handful of teachers to give brief lessons so we can watch colleagues teach and enjoy their expertise. I asked Cassie to do a lesson, and she did a lesson on graphing that astounded me. She had graphs and asked us to make up stories about what the graphs might mean. Then she gave us some story scenarios and asked us to “graph” the stories. It was so fun. I loved math again!

Thanksgiving is obviously about thanks. Not just food, of course, but thanks. But as we expand that understanding of thanksgiving (expand? A Thanksgiving pun on expanding waistlines?!) it is also about pardons and therefore forgiveness. And maybe as we make our way out of our food comas, we can go from the pie to the thanksgiving to the pardon to the forgiveness and therein lies the greatest of all gifts…hope. As we remind ourselves of our blessings, think purposefully about forgiveness, there we find the hope to sustain us. An old theologian once wrote, “Hope is fueled by the presence of God…it is also fueled by the future of God in our lives.” We can join in the psalmist who sang, “I shall yet praise Him and thank Him.”

You know, math got a little short shrift in this blog entry. I think I will come back in a day or two and offer some musings on math. I’m serious! I even have the title already: “Inscrutable Arithmetic.”

Time to turn on the Christmas music, and have a pie break.