(Un)Traditional Peach Pie

Soundtrack: Connie Converse's So Sad, So Lovely, First Aid Kit's The Lion's Roar, Cary Ann Hearst's "American Made Machine" and "Are You Ready to Die?," Joni Mitchell's "A Case of You" and "Big Yellow Taxi," Joan Baez's "Diamonds and Rust," and Mumford & Sons' "Awake My Soul."

Yesterday my friend and supervisor, Kate, came over and we made a peach pie. I anticipated it would be pretty standard, a traditional pie, sort of like the way this woman describes baking a perfect peach pie: Farmers' market peaches, lattice-top pie crust, whole wheat flour to add an "earthy note that complements the sweet peaches."

I bought seven peaches from La Casa del Pueblo, the largest grocery store near me. The recipe calls for six cups, so I thought seven would be plenty, and probably leave some over.

She came in, looking fresh and lovely, her hair pulled back in a bun, wisps of brown hair around her neck and face. Kate is natural and easy, and exudes peace and kindness. It is easy talking to her. She washed the peaches, and I peeled them. Peaches have such a special scent: They are warm and sweet--summer embodied. I love their soft skins (the ones I was slicing away with a little knife and tossing into the garbage).

All seven peaches added up to about five cups! What! We walked to the corner market, which of course didn't have peaches, so we bought a mango. As I mixed the flour, salt, and oil to make the crust that I padded down into the pie plate (rolling it out didn't work out so well), Kate mixed the peaches, mango, flour, sugar, and cinnamon together in a big red bowl. She couldn't find the lemon juice in the fridge (it was with the vinegars, oops) so she cut up and juiced a lime instead. When the delicious-smelling mix was in the pie crust, I pressed pie dough into pieces between my fingers and dappled the crust.

While it baked at 425 for forty minutes, we went outside to look at my downstairs neighbor's beehive. Kate loves bees (BEES!).

We ate our slices of pie in the little park across the street. The pie is tasty--messy, a little tropical, and sweet. The crust is savory and measures out the sweetness of the peaches and mango.

To the Lighthouse

I set out to visit the Grosse Point lighthouse in Evanston today. Kate went a few days ago with her husband and posted pictures on her blog. Her pictures display a place grand, remote, and shrouded in love. Their smiles cover up their secret, which is whatever it is that makes them so happy to be together and in love.

I was going to bake an apple pie, but I found myself putting on my coat and scarf. I had to go to the lighthouse first.

It takes an hour on public transit to get to the lighthouse. I bought a coffee and brought my book, Milan Kundera's Identity. It is an intelligent, erotic story about a couple as they grow distant and unfamiliar to each other, misunderstanding the other's intentions at nearly every step.

I finished Jane Eyre yesterday. It made me wonder if Charlotte Bronte ever married. At the end, Jane says:

"I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest--blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am; ever more absolutely bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh."

Kundera's protagonist provides a sharp contrast:

"Love as an exaltation of two individuals, love as fidelity, passionate attachment to a single person--no, that doesn't exist. And if it does exist, it is only as self-punishment, willful blindness, escape into a monastery. She tells herself that even if it does exist, love ought not to exist."

On the walk from the el stop to the beach I felt oppressed by the largeness and the beauty of the Evanston homes on either side of me. I felt acutely that I would not end up in a place like that, and it made me depressed. I imagined living out my days in a tiny apartment in a city. I missed my family, and Kentucky.

When I wasn't expecting it, the lighthouse was there in front of me. Once there, I found I didn't care to look at it for long. I walked around and towards the lake, immense, crashing, and beautiful through the twisted black branches of the bare trees. I walked out on the sand and stared at the water. Being on the lake reminded me of my first summer in Chicago. Once, during a terrible storm, I walked out to the edge of a barrier and stood there as the waves crashed around me, reckless, alone, and free. The next day we heard about a Northwestern student who had been swept into the lake and drowned, and I wondered if he had gone out like me, to push his limits, to dare himself.

Standing on the dirty sand, blocks of ice to my left and the blue-gray water before me, I started laughing. I was so happy to be here, alone. I laughed like a crazy person, without real mirth but loving the sensation. I faced the lake and I started singing an old disco song about picking up the pieces and standing up, strong and defiant.

I walked back to the el, not feeling oppressed by the houses anymore. I remembered: My uncle at the lake after his son's graduation; Christopher's story of his baptismal dip in Lake Erie after his last breakup; and my dad and me having lobster bisque at a tavern--he was telling me that life is like water, and sometimes you're up at the crest of a wave and sometimes you're just even, but there are always times when it rises up again.

I went home. The feeling of freedom and elation didn't last once inside, and I made the pie with fury and bitterness. As I rolled out the dough and the butter kept sticking to the rolling pin and I just couldn't get it right, I felt like I was going to have a nervous breakdown. But when I finally got it and was sprinkling the sugar and spice mixture onto the apples, the smell rose up and suddenly I was in my grandmother's house. It was unbidden and I couldn't think where or when the memory was coming from. I imagined her making pies. I imagine to her it was more a matter of routine. Of course, somewhere inside her she did it out of love for her family, but it was because it was just the thing one did. You were a grandmother, you were a woman, so you made pies for your family. No big deal. It wasn't an event for her. It's just a pie.

The pie just came out of the oven, bubbling. It smells sweet and delicious, and I'm going to share it with people I care about.