Room for Lemon Meringue Pie?
Discovering the sweetness of life outside the kitchen
“Dad, how do you even have room to keep eating?” I dug my toes into my grandparents’ red-shag carpeted dining room in the mid-1980s. Dinner was just about over, though dishes surrounded Dad.
My dad glanced up at me over the gold rims of his glasses. They were smudged, and I saw bits of mashed potatoes caught in his mustache. He smirked and heaped more chicken and cole slaw onto his plate. Dad knew two things: 1) we could not eat dessert until the table was fully cleaned off, and 2) his stepfather and I were waiting for his mother’s famous homemade lemon meringue pie.
Grandpa and I stared at Dad as Grandma exited the kitchen and walked over to watch the spectacle. She smiled. “Is it good, Bobby?”
Dad shook his head in disbelief. “Yeah, Mom. It’s damn good.”
Dad threw his hands up when he finished every morsel in every dish and exclaimed, “Mom, I don’t know how you do it.”
She beamed and asked, “Do you have room for anything else?”
“Do I have room? Do I have room!” They grinned at one another.
Grandpa refused to wait any longer. He was up in a flash with his plastic crumb catcher, cleaning the table before Dad moved. I stood next to Grandpa, waiting to use the device and help in any way I could to get the Dad food-show-extravaganza moving along.
“Ruby — Dammit. You’ll get your pie.” Grandma glared at Grandpa.
“Mom. Did you say there was pie?” Dad moved his eyebrows up and down above his green eyes before chuckling.
Grandpa picked his teeth with the toothpick he lodged in the corner of his mouth when dinner ended for us — half an hour before. We could do nothing but wait until the pie got to the table.
It was ten more minutes before it finally arrived. The meringue had sweat beads on the slight tan and white peaks covering its yellow middle. Grandma mentioned the work it had taken to perfect the flaky crust made with Crisco, but I was drooling as I thought about the tart zest she grated into the lemon middle.
Grandma cut the first piece and handed it to her husband. Dad got the following piece, which looked like two normal-sized pieces. And finally, my piece arrived on a small plate. I stared at the simplicity.
“Are you going to eat it or stare at it?” Grandma asked me a bit too brusquely.
I laid my fork on its side and took a small bite of the merengue, which melted in my mouth. I thought, even if my stomach hurts in a few minutes, this will be worth it. The airy cloud tasted like it had tiny hints of caramel on top. As I picked at a piece of the flaky crust, I used my finger to push little crust flakes onto my fork before bringing the fork to my mouth. By the time I was done, only the lemony goodness remained. With the first tiny forkful, I breathed in a vibrant citrus smell and prepared my mouth for the tartness to follow. This was perfection.
When I finished, I looked up. I could hear Grandpa watching 60 Minutes in the next room. But Dad was still savoring his piece while Grandma looked on, emanating a proud sparkle of accomplishment.
Fast forward a few decades — I had given up baked goods, including lemon meringue pie, by the early 2010s. My grandmother had long since passed, and the only time I came across lemon meringue pie was in diners and bakeries. So, not eating it wasn’t that hard. And while I thought about my grandparents, I was still unsure how to process events from my childhood.
Yet, one day, I was touring the NYC Transit Museum and saw an old advertisement in a vintage train for My-T-Fine Lemon Flavored Pie Filling. It showed a piece of lemon meringue pie, and I was transported back to my Grandma’s kitchen.
I could see myself at around age ten, pulling open the fridge door just enough to discreetly watch my grandmother’s meringue sweat on top of a pie in the fridge.
“Out! You’ll get this later. It needs to set, and opening and closing the fridge won’t let it. Can’t you find something to do?”
I would pop back up twenty minutes later when she moved on to her next task. “Grandma,” I’d ask, “Can you show me what you’re doing?”
“I’m already done,” the coiffed and “naturally-dyed” Clairol blond-haired grandma said to the pre-teen with a mop of unkempt brown frizz at the top of her head.
I knew she didn’t have a lot of patience to mold me in her ways, but I’d persist. “But, can’t you teach me to make stuff in the kitchen?”
When I think back, I realize that at nearly all these times, my grandfather would appear with a distraction. In the summer, he’d say, “Let’s go water the garden.” And, in the winter, he’d offer, “Let’s go find a puzzle or a game.” I thought he was the leader of all things fun. With him, I learned to appreciate gardening, card games, and jigsaw puzzles. I learned how to create projects from spare items left around the house and who the most important golfers were in the 80s.
I don’t know why Grandma didn’t want to share her kitchen domain with me. She’s no longer around to ask, and even if I could, I doubt she would provide me the sound bite I am looking for. Instead, what I see now is all of the distractions my grandfather provided, which offered me alternative ways to taste the sweetness of life.
