Memories Monday

My dad's making pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. It's evening, probably Wednesday evening and it's just the two of us in the kitchen of the Glen Rock house. I'm standing by the Dutch door, leaning on the counter. I watch him mix everything together, roll the crust out, crimp the edges with a fork. When he's almost done, I ask him when he's going to put the evaporated milk in. He looks at me, looks at the pie. Looks at the can of evaporated milk, still sitting there, painfully full to the brim. Looks at me again. "Oh shit." My eyes go wide and deep deep inside I burst out laughing, somehow knowing that it would be a bad thing to even make the tiniest of sounds at that moment.

He pours the pie back out, mixes in the milk and dumps it all back in the shell. He's careless now, has given up on making it beautiful. Shoves it in the oven and starts cleaning up the kitchen.

The pie turns out great. No one notices, and Thanksgiving becomes a holiday of wonderful food and hand-tracing turkeys and football and the first time I ever heard my dad say the s-word out loud.