Making Pies, a memory in the making, filling for dreams to come and lives lived.

One of the first things that my two little girls ever truly got to make in the kitchen was pie dough.  They had both helped me by sitting, one on each stove counter, from the time they could truly sit.  The neighbor girl was totally aghast by them being there when she saw them for the first time. But at the time she saw them they were both old hats at it.  They both were shown how and could stir sauces.  I let them help cut, with their own little real knifes from about two on.  They each had their own little cutting board and tiny paring knives as Christmas presents and we allowed to use them.  I think that is how you teach a child to succeed, by allowing them to accomplish what others think is beyond their years. They both also got to start rolling doughs around two to three, they are after all a year apart in age.  They have actually never really seemed like it to me. Booboo is about 95% percentile in height and Yogie is 50% so by the time Booboo was 2 they were the same size.  They have actually always been about the same mental age since then, Yogie had to overcome many stresses in life and Booboo just seemed to complete her, so they are very close.  They complete each others sentences and balance each other. 

They each got their little ball of dough and their own rolling pin.  They would roll their doughs and even though they started with very clean hands, rolling and rerolling dough soon leads to discoloration and toughness in the dough but they didn't care, they were experimenting and learning the feel of dough in their hands.  You have to learn the feel it isn't something some one can tell you you have to feel it and learn it for yourself. I think their favorite part was learning how to hold their fingers just right to get the dough to make a nice edge around the pie.  Booboo had a little more trouble leaning than Yogie, she was the younger one after all.  They loved to sign the pie with their own interpretation of the letter that went on the pie, we always put the first letter of the filling on the top of the pie.  A is for Apple, P is for peach, they did enjoy the ditty that we sang to remember it. We have a life time of memories from the pie making and the pies we will make in years to come.  They now make 8 pies a week, in the summer, for the farmers market. I don't know that they remember their first pies, I am actually sure they don't, but the feeling of the dough in their hands has to bring the comfort of the learning of their craft to their minds on some level. 

I don't remember making pies, at such a young age, with my mom, she actually probably didn't have the luxury of time that I had with my younger girls.  She was a busy mom, like I was with my older kids, and the learning or teaching would have been less idyllic and more of a necessity in the teaching.  Young mothers also need the task completed faster than this old mom did, so alot of times it is just easier to do it yourself.  I learned a lot the second time around, that taking the time to make the pie together created a bond that long out lived the pie or its memory. 

Mom did teach me to make pies, as she is very good at it, and I ain't bad myself. But there again the pie wasn't the important part of the process, maybe at the time but not in the scope of my existence.  It really was about the time she had to spend with just me and in a big family one on one time is rare and the older you are in the family the less time you actually need, physically, and as little ones needed her more there was never much time for the one on one. I do take away from my childhood that warmth of spirit from making those pies with my mom if not the actual memory.

I do want for all of my children memories of one on one time with them, I have always taken the time and made the effort to make sure each of my children had that, as I longed for it so in my childhood.  I still believe we change the things we disliked in our parents child rearing, it is not always about great philosophical changes, sometimes the changes are little and sutler, they are some times as simple as letting a little hand stir a pot, with supervision, that others think they are not old enough to stir.... tomorrow.