Grandma Margaret was my mother’s mother, and she was always there. We spent weekends at her home, and she visited us often. So many of my memories of her bring me right back to her kitchen.
Her raisin pie was the best I’ve ever tasted. It was a staple in her home, something she made all the time. Raisins, sugar, butter, a touch of lemon juice, and cinnamon. Simple ingredients that, in her hands, became something wonderful.
Grandma was a pie maker. I don’t remember ever seeing her make a cake. But I can still picture her rolling out pie dough while I sat at the little wooden drop-leaf table in her tiny kitchen.
The dough didn’t always cooperate. When it fell apart, she would quietly say that she never could make a pretty pie crust. Then she’d laugh, gather up the pieces, and press them into the pan.
“Pie crust doesn’t have to be perfect to be good,” she’d say.
And she was right. No one eating that pie cared how the crust looked. It was delicious hot or cold, especially with vanilla ice cream.
Years later, after I was grown, I still found myself sitting at her kitchen table, watching her make raisin pie. By then, the kitchen had been remodeled and wasn’t so tiny anymore. But the little wooden drop-leaf table remained.
Now I was old enough to sit and have tea with her, to ask questions I hadn’t thought to ask as a child.
One day, I asked, “Grandma, how did you learn to make raisin pie?”
“My mama made it all the time,” she said. “I watched her make it.”
I’ve thought about that answer many times since. There I was, watching my grandmother make a pie, just as she had watched her own mother.
Grandma is gone now, and I’m the one making the raisin pie. Every time I make it, I think of her—and of my great-grandmother, whose kitchen I never sat in, but whose pie somehow found its way into mine.
I’d like to write out the recipe and frame it for my kitchen wall. Underneath it, I think I’ll put Grandma’s words:
“Pie crust doesn’t have to be perfect to be good.”
And perhaps that’s a good thought to carry with me as I begin writing again, too.
