I was lingering over chamomile tea in my kitchen when I heard the buzz of a chainsaw. My energy sagging, I was two weeks overdue for my first child. I climbed gingerly down the hillside toward my neighbors' home to investigate, slow step by slow step. A man was slicing at the base of a towering Norway spruce.
"How's it going?" yelled my neighbor Georgette.
"I'm exhausted," I said. My body was tense from the roar of the chainsaw. The tree's position was dangerous--my neighbor's house only thirty feet away on one side and a garage on the other. Bobbing unsteadily, the spruce snapped and careened downward. With an earth-quaking thud the tree smacked the lawn, its branches swishing dangerously against the garage.
"I... I think I just had a contraction," I said. "That tree got my heart racing, my tummy jumping, and now a little pain comes and goes."
"Let's call your husband," said Georgette. "Your baby's going to arrive soon, and I've planned a special treat."
"Oh don't worry for a moment about us," I replied. "You really shouldn't."
I'd always been a "giver," I realized, like my parents. We were energized by preparing food for others. Dad delighted in dropping off loaves of his Friendship Bread. Mom loved to share Mason jars of homemade pickles, dilly beans, or pink applesauce from North Carolina mountain apples. But when it came to letting other people put themselves out for us, we were reluctant. We didn't want to be a bother. And we always protested with quite a few "you shouldn'ts."
Kathleen Grayce arrived... finally. Black tufty hair, a tiny rosebud of a mouth, all the requisite fingers and toes, she was perfect. We couldn't believe our good fortune. And then the cells in her tubby baby belly fired up a message to her already active brain that alerted her ready-to-be-tried-out vocal cords, and she let out a monstrous cry that meant,
"FOOD! FOOD NOW! FOOD RIGHT NOW!"
"Remember, you're eating as a team," said the nurse. "No wine or alcohol. No garlic, onions, chili or pepper. And forget greasy foods like French fries." After pausing and with deliberate emphasis she added, "and no chocolate."
Okay, I realized, this baby-business was going to separate me temporarily from my gastronomic pleasures. But no chocolate, really?
Before Peter and I knew it we were walking up our driveway, Kathleen snuggled on his shoulder. We spotted two large brown paper bags wedged against the door. "Guess what?" said Peter peering at a note. "The Mapes left us a heap of goodies."
I was ravenous. After days of so-so hospital food and a pile up of missed meals, I hungered for home cooking. What did we find?
Roasted rosemary chicken.
Mashed potatoes.
Freshly baked bread.
A zucchini tart with veggies from their garden.
Rusty-red heirloom tomatoes.
A sea of blueberries peeking out from under the pastry strips of a homemade pie.
Even a bottle of champagne.
And, truth be told, I was ready for a small celebratory glass. Food! Drink! Peter popped open the bubbly and gave a toast, "To our new family."
I could hardly wait to convey thanks. "That pie has five pints of berries I picked at a farm up the road," said Georgette. "I loved making it for you. You know, we wanted to help out."
As a new mother, my response to offers of help was changing dramatically. Along with the notion of "give," I warmed to the idea of "give-and-take." And a profound sense of gratitude came in accepting those offers. (More about cultivating gratitude and other virtues can be found in the book The Virtues of Cooking.) My friend Fran, soon to be Kathleen's godmother, offered to watch her during my doctor's appointment. "Yes," I said immediately. Later Fran confessed that she spent the entire time bent over Kathleen's bassinet watching every inhale... "just to be sure she hadn't stopped breathing." I felt such gratitude.And when my parents proposed flying up earlier from North Carolina than planned, I said another relieved "yes." More gratitude.
Upon Dad's arrival he headed to the grocery store. Picking through the Granny Smith apples, he told other shoppers: "My daughter just had a baby. This afternoon I'm going to make my granddaughter her first Circus Tent Apple Pie."
Ten Granny Smith apples, a small container of cinnamon and a five-pound bag of flour were among Dad's treasures. A little later over dinner, my parents, Peter and I relived our exciting recent events. And then, with Kathleen's head nestled near my heart, I most gratefully accepted a piece of Dad's pie--its golden crust towering like a circus tent over the cooked apples.
New parenthood was, at that shiny moment, as easy as pie. I blissfully spooned into the apples. From across the room I heard Dad say, "I've been reading up on cinnamon, the spice I sprinkled on little Kathleen's pie. From tree bark, it was once a gift for kings and queens, and used in Egypt since 2000 BC. Supposedly it was added to Moses's holy anointing oil. Now Kathleen knows of its enticing fragrance, its history recorded somewhere in her brain. She'll grow up loving its distinctive sweetness in pies."
Tiny as she was, my daughter was already experiencing some of the same culinary scents and sights of my childhood in North Carolina. Astronomer, astrophysicist and author Carl Sagan said, "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe."
The miracles of the universe are manifested in everything around us. Illumination comes when we pause in gratitude, in stillness, our eyes opening in appreciation for these most wondrous creations, big and little, like babies and apple pie.
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For more on Elinor Griffith and Virtues Cooking read the Huffington Post's "An Unconventional Recipe from Julia Child's Kitchen."
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