Back when pie was P.I.E.

One of my favorite times of the year is here: It's pie season!

The weeks surrounding Thanksgiving are when pies take center stage. Christmas time is for cookies; Thanksgiving time is for pies. The planning for them. The baking of them. The eating of them. This is when the traditional Thanksgiving favorites top dessert menus.

I'm talking pumpkin pies, of course, but apple pies, pecan pies, sweet potato pies and mincemeat pies, too. Though I admit I've never tried the last three on the list, as traditional Thanksgiving pies at my place are pumpkin, cherry and chocolate cream. (Pecans, sweet potatoes and mincemeat aren't something I have a hankering for any time of the year, in pies or otherwise.)

Then there are the fancy-pants kinds of Thanksgiving pies seen on magazine covers and Pinterest boards, the pies I hope to one day bake, hope to one day taste. Caramel apple pie. Pumpkin ice cream pie. Peanut butter pie. Strawberry-raspberry pie and cranberry pies of all sorts, too.

I love pie.

But Thanksgiving time is the only time I make pie, the only time I eat pie.

That wasn't always the case.

For a brief period of time when my daughters still lived at home, I proposed pie as our all-time — meaning All. The. Time — dessert of choice. Not for dessert though, but for breakfast. On Saturdays. Saturdays far removed from Thanksgiving.

For several months, I offered my then-teenage girls (and my husband, too) pie on Saturday mornings. A time or two I baked a pie, but more often than not it was a perfect pastry picked up from the nearest Village Inn or Perkins, those 24/7 restaurants featuring display cases filled with full-sized pies of the most luscious sorts. Our favorite was the silky smooth French Silk topped with rich, thick, real whipped cream and chunky chocolate shavings. Runner up? A cookies and cream concoction that was to die for, at least for those who'd die for more than their share of Oreo cookies.

On very ordinary Saturdays, I'd set out on the kitchen counter the perfect pie for the family to serve themselves a piece as they woke on Saturday mornings. Alongside the delectable pie and the dessert plates on which pieces were to be placed, I set a note card on which I'd written the following:

May you always have P.I.E.

Peace, Inspiration and Enthusiasm

Those three things — peace, inspiration and enthusiasm — were what I considered essential ingredients for a fullfilled life. I wanted fulfilling lives for my girls. I wanted them to always have peace, always find inspiration, always be enthusiastic about their world and their place in it.

I wanted them to always have P.I.E.

I thought pie was the perfect way to serve up regular reminders to pursue exactly those things.

My pie-serving quest took place during my oldest daughter's senior year of high school. When the opportunity arose for parents to purchase ad space in the yearbook, space in which they could publish a farewell to their graduating children, I bought space, noted a few niceties for Brianna from Mom and Dad, and ended it with "And remember to always have P.I.E."

I wanted Brianna, as well as Megan and Andrea, to place firmly in their hearts and minds my efforts at impressing upon them the importance of P.I.E.... and pie. I wanted those pie-serving Saturdays to be added to their lists of Cool Things Mom Used to Do and become cool things they would one day do with their own children. I wanted them to always remember to have P.I.E. and to always remember Mom's serving up of such slices of wisdom.

That didn't happen.

I asked one of my daughters not long ago if she remembered all the pie we used to eat. My question sparked not even the slightest glimmer of remembrance. More recently, when the proliferation of pie pins on Pinterest reminded me of our P.I.E. eating days and I considered writing a post such as this, I asked Jim if he remembered those pies I hoped had meant so much to my family. He didn't.

Sometimes our attempts at making an impression on our children, on our families, fail. My earnest efforts at making P.I.E. an important part of our Saturdays and each and every day to come were one such failure. It was good at the time. No, it was delicious at the time. But, as is the case with all things related to growing babies into adults, that time didn't last. Our prime pie season, for reasons of which I'm not quite sure, lasted a shorter period than most other seasons of childrearing.

No matter, though. The return of pie season brings with it my hope that peace, inspiration and enthusiasm abound in the hearts and lives of my daughters — even without me foisting upon them oversized servings of French Silk Pie.

And despite being unable to share oversized servings of French Silk Pie with you, my friends, I hope that during this Thanksgiving season and beyond, you, too, will remember to always have pie. Not only the pie that satisfies your stomach, but the P.I.E. that satisfies your soul, too.

Today's question:

What are your favorite kinds of pie?

Celebrating no celebrations

For my oldest daughter's first birthday, I went all out. I recruited my mom to make a fancy birthday cake with adorable clowns o' frosting a la the Wilton Cake Decorating Cookbook, invited everyone with even the slightest interest in my daughter, packed our tiny apartment with well wishers and gifts galore.

It was the very best birthday party ever.

Until the next year, that is. And until the next child, too — two more of which arrived in rapid succession. Followed by two more first birthdays in equally rapid succession.

With that very first first birthday party for my very first daughter more than 31 years ago, I had set a precedent: Birthday parties in my house would be a big deal. Not expensive, for money was tight as could be considering we were a young family with three children birthed in a three-year span. But the birthday parties would certainly be festive. Each and every time.

Birthdays for my daughters were celebrated at home — no parties at pizza places, skating spaces or swimming pools. Each party had a specific theme chosen by the honoree, with homemade cakes, homemade favors for guests to bring home, homemade fun packaged in such a manner my daughters (hopefully) never realized their special days were celebrated at home because we couldn't afford the party packages offered by the fancy-schmancy peddlers of commercialized fun.

Fun as they were for the birthday girls and guests, that homemade packaging was exhausting for Mom. That would be me — the family party planner bound and determined to make memorable birthday moments for my daughters, come hell or high water, heaven help us all.

One birthday season when I was knee-deep in pre-party prep and freak-out fare — at this point I can no longer recall whose birthday or what theme — my own mom, in hopes of assuaging my stress, advised me, "You don't have to make every single birthday special, Lisa."

I disagreed vehemently... but silently, as I had too much to do, no time to argue my point. But, yes, I did have to make every single birthday special. Because there are so very few that parents get to celebrate with a child. Sixteen or so, if we're lucky, if friends don't win out over family sooner than that.

So I did my best to make birthday celebrations special.

I did my best to make holiday celebrations special, too. Everything from Valentine's Day on through New Year's Day featured special traditions and rituals, special food, special decorations and sometimes even special music. As was the case with our birthday celebrations throughout the childrearing years, our holiday celebrations were never expensive but they were festive. And memorable. And the stuff our family was made of.

And they were exhausting for Mom. That would be me, the holiday planner bound and determined to make memorable holiday moments for my daughters, come hell or high water, heaven help us all.

Little did I realize then how very few holidays I'd have to celebrate with my entire clan. I thought that even once the nest emptied, every child-turned-adult would flock home to celebrate the seasons with Mom and Dad, spouses and offspring in tow.

I've since realized how wrong that idea. Thankfully, though, how right it turned out to be that I did do the best I could each and every holiday while my girls lived at home. Because there were so few of those, too.

The big shebangs had their place, their heyday, but now the celebrations are smaller, in scope and in attendance. Celebrations take less work, yet they still require work.

That required work for birthday and holiday celebrations — exhaustive overloads in the past, minor smidgens today —  is one reason fall has long been my favorite time of year. The months of September and October, to be exact. Because during the months of September and October there isn't a single birthday, a single holiday I'm expected to celebrate. Nothing to plan or purchase or poke-my-eye-out-with-a-hot-poker-because-I-need-a-freakin'-break-from-special-celebrations sort of nonsense. None.

See, as much as I love my family and would now indeed poke my eye out to have them around again for family celebrations and to occasionally fill my (occasionally heart achingly) empty nest, I also love down time. Quiet time. Uneventful time. Time such as September 1 through October 30. Time with no celebrations. No celebrations is, for me, reason enough to celebrate.

True to my character, my past, my family-party-planning-personality, of course, I plan to make that celebration of no celebrations as absolutely special and memorable as possible.

By doing ab-so-lute-ly nothing.*

Happy No-Celebration season to you and yours! May it be everything you hoped it would be. And everything you hoped it would not be, too.

*Well, nothing related to celebrations, that is. The need for speed in securing income remains.

Today's question:

When is the biggest span of time with no birthdays/holidays/celebrations in your family?

New mom possessiveness: Seeking help from the grandmahood

I recently received an email from a pregnant mother who will soon have her first child. As the baby's birth nears, the new mom wrote, she's having difficulty coming to terms with the intense, scary and perfectly normal feelings of possessiveness over her baby — especially in relation to the soon-to-be-born child's grandmothers.

"Can you help?" she asked me.

Seems my post titled Grandma's No. 1 came up when this new mother Googled search queries such as "grandma obsessed with my baby." Admittedly, I just may sound a tad obsessed in that post, but I wrote those words from the heart and believe it's the truth on how many a grandma feels about her grandchildren. We are obsessed.

Which is exactly what concerns this new mother. It's why she asked if I could help her understand us crazy-in-love grandmas — an understanding that may help if her baby's grandmas turn out like the rest of us.

Before I respond to her, though, I'm seeking input from you, the Grandma's Briefs "grandmahood." Together we may properly shed light on why grandmothers feel the way we do. My hope is that as a whole, we can offer some guidance regarding what she calls the "stickiness in my heart" and her overwhelming feelings of possessiveness for her newborn when it comes to the "pretty reasonable" grandmothers in her life, who admittedly "haven't pulled any super crazy overbearing grandparent moves." 

First, of course, I must share with you the new mom's concerns about grandmothers in general and my Grandma's No. 1 post in particular. So here is the bulk of her letter to me:

There was a specific part in your post that bothered me. You said, "The thing is, when it comes to grandkids — and any grandma knows this, so I'm pretty much talking to the non-grandmas here — it's such a fresh, new, overwhelming love that it's hard to not gush and glow over it. New mothers feel the very same world-shaking love for their newborn, for their little ones as they grow..."

I have to very much disagree that grandmothers feel the SAME love for a newborn as their mothers do. Strong and also world-shaking, yes — but not the same. And even the way you worded this — that in fact mothers share the same love as grandmothers, instead of the other way around, also rubbed me the wrong way.

I also truly don't understand this section: "Much to their delight, they're getting a second opportunity to relish the fully-enveloping motherly love for a child. And relish it we do. Just like we did when our first child was born. And the second. And the third. And more."

I see what you're saying here, but this is NOT your child — so it is not the same love, and it may feel fully enveloping but it should still not compete with the mother's own love.

I'm sorry if I sound confrontational. That isn't my intention. I hope you'll forgive my very strong new mama feelings.

So please, please tell me: Do grandparents actually think that their love for the grandkids is the same as the parents' love?

I genuinely do not understand the grandparent obsession, to the point that it seems unhealthy to me. And I know all the boundary-less women my mom and MIL know that have grandkids are not helping them to be sane about my baby. I and am of course on the other side of life right now and just really struggling to relate to their feelings. I want to respect them, but also set reasonable boundaries.

Any tips on how to handle these feelings without hurting the grandparents' feelings or causing strife? Is this just something that needs to change in my heart?

Thanks for listening.

I want to tell this new mother that yes, we grandmothers do feel an all-consuming love for our grandchildren that is just like that of a mother, at least in terms of the degree of consumption.

I want to tell her that reasonable, well-intentioned grandmothers certainly don't want to possess or parent our grandchildren, that we delight in seeing our children parent our grandchildren, sometimes with such delight we fear our hearts will burst with pride.

And I want to tell her the importance of remembering that at least one of the grandmothers she worries about once held her in their arms, that they loved, adored, cuddled and worried about her in exactly the same way she is and will with her baby. That that grandmother fully understands and could shed light on the situation better than any stranger could. So talk to her about boundaries, expectations, her love and respect for the grandmothers in relation to what works for her as a new mother.

Mostly, I just want to tell her to not fret about competition or who loves the baby more, to accept that her role as the one and only mother of that child is a given — and that rational, loving grandmothers will give her the space to be that, do that, own that.

That's what I want to tell that new mother. But I want to know what you — the grandmothers and others who may see yourself in my words or hers — would tell this heart-heavy mother who wants to do and be and feel what's right for her baby, for the grandmothers and for herself.

So please share your thoughts. Ultimately, perhaps the best thing for me to do is direct the new mom to this post and your comments, so she'll glean guidance from the grandmahood collective, not just from me. I thank you. I venture to say she will, too.

Today's question:

What would you say to the new mother regarding the "stickiness" in her heart?

Picture this: Two crabs

This post linked to 5 Minutes for Mom and Wordless Wednesday.

Today's question:

In what ways does your personality match the supposed traits of your astrological sign?