Let Us Eat Pie

In TV Land, the “Friends” fellowshipped over coffee in their favorite café, while the “Golden Girls” gathered around the kitchen table for cheesecake. In our home, it’s Edwards pies.
These gatherings are rarely organized. Instead, they happen when family members and friends fill the chairs around the kitchen table. One minute, we’re talking about work, school, or relationships, and then someone says, “It’s time for pie.”
I really should anticipate these moments and always have a pie in the freezer, but I don’t. When the time for pie arises, a couple of people take a trip to the store, then we all settle in for another round of conversation.
My daughter, Lauren, said that from now on, we will haul our kitchen table to every family shower or wedding, since so many of our memories have been created there. If she does that, I’m warning everyone right now, it won’t be a pretty sight. When new, it was a large, beautiful table that could accommodate seven chairs. Now it bears the marks of many meals, birthday parties, and science fair projects. A closer look will also reveal fingernail polish, bare areas where someone used acetone to remove the fingernail polish, which also removed the finish, and stains from hair dye. The table’s not perfect, but neither are we.
Recently, Lauren and her friend walked through the front door with a plastic bag that held yet another pie. Soon her sisters and a few cousins appeared. When they found out that homework prevented someone else from joining them, they quickly delivered a slice of pie and a few minutes of conversation to their studious cousin.
This traveling comfort took a trip across the river this past week when my oldest daughter, Monique, asked me to drive to Thibodaux with her to visit her sister, Elise. Lauren was also available to join us, along with Jackie, my college roommate. I thought Jackie would enjoy seeing how the dormitory situation at Nicholls had progressed in the last 30 years. Before leaving, I did what the girls would have expected me to do, I bought a pie.
After dinner, and after getting the approval of the restaurant staff, I pulled the box of chocolate pie from my purse. (I chose a very large purse that night.) The look on Elise’s face was worth the effort and the drive. Monique distributed the plastic forks that I had also brought, and we dug in.
We all realize that the pie has no power to console or to soothe. It has just come to represent times when family members that are best friends, and friends who are as close as family members, join to encourage one another. What a blessing it is for my children to grow up surrounded by supportive people who make themselves available to offer the wisdom of their counsel and the comfort of their company. King Solomon would agree, for he wrote, “If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!” (Ecclesiastes 4:10)
I’m determined to stand firm against the busyness of life so that I can always be available to nurture the relationships of family and friends. And I’ll bring the pie.