I learned to make pies—specifically pristine, perfect, reproducible pie crusts 

from my paternal grandmother 

She filled them with fruit, mostly apples and cherries, pumpkin at Thanksgiving— 

I remember most the way her hands moved so quickly rolling out the crust; the movement of the rolling pin—darting and dancing—an art form in itself 

In my memory her hands move with the surety of someone who was never first, hands that had watched others make errors that they would never make, there was no time for re‐rolling the crust when you had 7 mouths to feed 

On a humid, stormy afternoon I instruct Anne in making the now infamous crust 

is this what women who love women but desire no children do? 

pass on family secrets to one another without acknowledging that is what is happening? 

“The key, the most important ingredient is the ice water” I tell her, “add water until it is almost too sticky” 

My Grandmother taught me the secret to pie crusts, to her pie crust is that you can’t ever really ruin it: too dry add more water 

too sticky add more flour 

and 

if it ever got too bad, start over 

Even though she lived with us for a few months during late elementary school and I should have more memories of her, those summer afternoons spent mastering her crust are the ones that stick

The dictionary lists 3 definitions for the word “crust” 

1. the outside part of bread 

         2. the cover of a pie 

         3. a hard surface layer 

geologically speaking the crust is the smallest layer, the zone we inhabit, the barrier between us and a partially molten mantle 

Simplistically we are sometimes inclined to compare the earth’s crust to a pie crust leading to analogies of drilling rigs punching through crust into liquid oil reserved below this is inaccurate 

Everything we know of the Earth is crust; the oil, the water, the mountains 

It will take at least another 1,000 years of scientific advancements before we can truly dream of punching through the crust to the goo below 

My grandmother lived to be 94. A long life on the human time scale a minute blip on the geologic time scale 

everything I knew of my grandmother, her ancestry, the names of her children, her pie crust recipe is superficial 

It would take me another 94 years of kitchen afternoons to discover my grandmother’s inner goo I knew only the surface of this tiny yet immense woman 

age, language, memory 

kept our relationship only on the crust

Today I fill my crusts mostly with peaches 

Tart—like a life of ceaseless labor 

Sweet—like the unexpected in between moments 

Bright—like the tenderness inside, protected by so many hardened crusts, binding us all together