As I was taking pictures of slices of pie last night, The Girl grouched that None Of Her Friends’ Mothers took pictures of THEIR desserts, which is how you can tell that her life is a Vale Of Sorrows. It was a very good pie – for a long time, I was less then enamored of meringue and suddenly I see its uses as a less sweet, less rich counterpart to EXTREMELY rich pie fillings, like the chocolate+condensed milk + butter+egg yolk cream filling above. The Girl – always one for enjoyable heapings of drama – gasped "Mom! You’re so CLEVER!" when I pulled it from the oven. Well, that’s nice to hear. And then she ate two slices in rapid succession. SUCCESS!
I don’t make desserts every night. I do bake frequently during the week, but normally it’s just prosaic things like "muffins with VEGETABLES in them", as my poor horrified son says. The current dietary wisdom says that sugar is a wicked, wicked thing and I’m not enough of a rebel to totally thumb my nose at the gaunt, hollow-cheeked nutritionists (wait – I forgot "grey skinned." I feel better now.). I do make desserts often ENOUGH, though, that you would think that my children wouldn’t treat them with such shocked cries of delight, as though they’d heard there was such a thing as dessert but never thought they’d actually SEE it.
She’s not an eater, my Girl. At least twice a year, we have the Worried About Her Weight speech with her doctor – she doesn’t weigh 50 pounds yet, and her six year old brother has already passed her while being a slim lad himself – and generally it ends with frustrated shrugging all around. There’s nothing WRONG with her, aside from being finicky and small, but her diet feels like something I should be able to fix. She interprets my worried hovering over her eating as criticism of her, as me being unhappy with her capable, clever self – and I interpret her poor appetite, foolishly, as a rejection of me.
And this is silly and wrong, of course, but we love our kids so much that we tend to watch, in some private, dark part of our heart, for signs that they love us BACK, for signs that they forgive us for being crabby and impatient, that it’s okay. And so certain things can become laden with unearned symbolism, this meatloaf transcending meatloaf and becoming my fear, for example, of impending adolescence, the zucchini muffin my apology for having to rush them out the door every weekday morning, those carrots sticks representing my fear that my kids are going to get SCURVY.
And chocolate meringue pie, of course, becomes my wish to love my children with a sweet and uncomplicated love – as rich as butter, as sweet as sugar and as deep as chocolate – to become, if only for a moment, this imaginary perfect mother, with something remarkable in her hands.