More pie, please

The other night I was waxing nostalgic about lemon meringue pies. I had made some cookies and for the first time used lemon curd as a filling rather than jam, and the flavor sent me right back to family road trips for lemon meringue pie. Fried perch and then lemon meringue pie, to be exact. A template modified only slightly my junior year in London, where I had many a late night snack of French fries and chocolate cake.

Anyway, in the midst of my nostalgia, both for the flavor and the youth it takes to be able to polish off meals with this particular combination of food types, my husband announced, “Grandma B. used to make lemon meringue pie.” It was his turn for nostalgia.

I stalled for a few moments,then inquired if it was his mother or his grandmother who made the pies.

“My Mom. I’m sure she’d give you the recipe. All you have to do is call.”

More silence on my end. All I could envision was whipping egg whites into a frenzy but missing the essential capacity to whip them correctly, and having a soggy, flat-topped pie. When all I really want is one good slice, which could last me ‘til the end of the decade, because even though I adore this pie, I rarely eat it.

“Aren’t you a little behind on that project? I thought you were going to make pies.”

By this time, my son was totally on board with the idea that his mother should make another pie. Not, it turns out, because he’s a big pie fan – not so much – but because he’s the odd kid who prefers lemon and lime to chocolate and the thought of a lemon pie goes straight to his culinary soft spot. Plus, he got that I was being needled to do something, got that I was hedging and hesitating, and it was his turn to push me in the direction of doing something hard even when it seems daunting.

Something felt truly done for me when my first-ever pie came out so darned beautiful [even though I later learned that the bottom crust could have been flakier and the top was a bit unevenly browned]. But by our household standards, that pie was magnificent, and apparently I’ve been resting on the laurels that singular peach pie, followed by the success of our tulips, which have burst forth with purple glee and allow all three of us to walk slowly back and forth past them, marveling at the open buds, the not-yet-open ones, reveling in our success.

Parenting lessons can come back to haunt us in the oddest ways. It’s time for me to step up and put into action what I claim to be teaching my son: Do something hard even if your instinct is to back away – take the fear of failure with you as you plow headfirst into a new endeavor. Follow each success with further effort, as it’s only through real accomplishment that we have a sense of pride.

I did say I wanted to make pies. I guess I can’t stop after only making one. I have now promised to make this pie for my guys. My challenge, now that I’ve accepted it, is clear: I’ll be making my childhood favorite food, which I almost never eat now, from my mother-in-law’s recipe, which was one of my husband’s favorite foods that she made.

Oh my, the ways this pie might disappoint! What if my husband doesn’t like it? Or my son, who might take one bite and smile only politely? What if I don’t like it?

Here’s hoping this endeavor does all it might: evoke warm, happy, tasty sensations that will satisfy two grown-ups with very different childhood pie memories, and create a new experience for our own family. If I can pull it off, it will hold the tangy-sweet lemony taste of familial delight, topped with a light airy meringue whipped tall and proud by my own hand, unbowed in the face of attempting something difficult.