Blueberry Pie - perfect for Father's Day and Fourth of July

It is a hot Michigan day. We have checked in at the front of the blueberry farm and my dad has given me my bucket. "Come back when your bucket is full," he told me. I am somewhere between the rows, sitting down joyfully pulling blueberries right off the vine and popping them in my mouth. The sweet juice fills my mouth as the skins are torn by my teeth. When I hear my dad somewhere - rows over - say, "Don't just sit there and eat them. Are you filling your bucket?" I guiltily lie and say, "Yes." Not knowing till years later that the tell-tale stains of lying are written all over my face.

4 cups of fresh blueberries
3/4 cup of sugar
5 tablespoons of cornstarch
3 tablespoons of lemon juice (fresh squeezed is the best)
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 tablespoon of butter
2 nine inch pastry shells. One for the bottom and one for the lattice top. (Recipe will not follow because I use store-bought.)

Place one pastry shell in the bottom of a nine inch pie pan. Blueberries are some of the most fragile fruit, so spread them gently in the shell. Mix together the next five ingredients and then pour/spread this mixture over the blueberries. Cut the tablespoon of butter and place the pads evenly around the top. Carefully cut the other pastry shell into one inch wide strips. Place them one at a time over the top of the pie weaving in and out to form a lattice top for your pie. When my mother made blueberry pie she let me stand on a chair to do this part. Crimp the edges of the pie to form a thick crust. Before placing your pie in the oven, make sure you put it on a jelly roll pan. Blueberry pie is fabulous, but not when burned to the bottom of your oven. Bake 50-55 minutes (depending on the temperamental nature of your oven) at 375 degrees. Allow your pie to sit up for one hour before eating. Then serve it slightly warm with vanilla ice cream (preferably home made). Do not take your plate to the sink after eating because you are going to want seconds. Possibly thirds.

Missing

Do you miss me the way I miss you? Does it hit you in the middle of the night, on a strange road in a strange town, in line in a crowded store? The missing piece of you? The hole that is healed, yet open in your heart? I mean, my heart. The look on that kid's face that reminds me of you. That suddenly out of nowhere has me thinking of you? That suddenly has my cheek wet with one solitary tear. For you. When I look at pictures I wonder what it is like for you. Or if it is like for you. The fresh clean smell that smells like you do? You did. Because that's how I miss you.

The Point of No Return

This is printed on a sign at Niagra Falls. Near the sign there is a short narrative about the people who have crossed that point. Some in barrels, some not. And as I would come to know many times: some just in their minds.

The problem with secrets is that once you know one there is no going back to the state of not knowing. As much as you might not want to know - once you know you cannot magically erase the knowledge. And, there is the troublesome fact that truth is stranger and nearly always more fascinating than fiction. If I told you the secrets that I know you would think I was making them up. If I made up some secrets to tell you, you might think I was taking them from my own life. So, here they sit in my brain. Some of them eating away at the very tissue that is my conscious, some of them providing worthy script for my numerous daydreams. When the burden of the secrets is too much, I must remember that they are your secrets, not mine.

Evanescent

tending to become imperceptible; scarcely perceptible.

To you Life is a plan. As in What is the Plan? To me Life is a carefully designed and held box. Of memories. Both incredibly good and painfully bad. When we are here in the Present, it looks like we are together. But, I am hesitatingly unsure.

I-35 on a Saturday

I am sitting on my toilet. The pain is increasingly more intense. I am beginning to doubt what the doctor said about "some cramping." Could there have been a mistake? Maybe the baby is not dead after all? He is rubbing my back saying quite desperately: What can I do? I don't know. Can anyone do anything? I think, for some reason, I am saying the Hail Mary. Then after what seems like days, but is only hours, it is over. I am back in bed. Left with not a soft bundle of baby, but with a nasty jagged place in my heart.

This is called a miscarriage.

This is not a nightmare. It is a distant yet distinct memory. My eyes are open and my cheeks are wet. I find I am awake. The highway is a parking lot and I am still stuck in traffic.

How To Avoid Frantically Searching Through Six Bags of Birthday Party Garbage....

Explain to your six year old the value of jewelry before she takes it off and haphazardly places it somewhere.