Skip to main content

Yesterday's slice, discounted.

"You know," she continued. "That one thing that your family always has for Thanksgiving. That whenever you don't have it, the whole thing just feels wrong." She went back to eating her burrito bowl and I sat quietly for a moment.

"No." I said. "We don't have anything like that."

We always made the pumpkin pie together. It was just a tradition that started before I was aware of traditions. It was just an absolute of the holidays. It was never Thanksgiving without us getting together one evening and making a pumpkin pie. As a child, I used to love doing it. I felt so grown up. This was something my dad was doing. There were so many things to do, so many ways to help.

Cutting open the pumpkin. Pulling out all the innards. Separating the seeds for later. Cutting the pumpkin. Steaming it. Mashing it. Mixing it.

As I grew older, I learned to hate doing it. My time was too valuable to waste making a pumpkin pie. If it was something my dad wanted to do as a yearly routine, fine. I had no interest slaving over a pie. There were just so many things to do.

Cutting open the pumpkin. Pulling out all the innards. Separating the seeds for later. Cutting the pumpkin. Steaming it. Mashing it. Mixing it.

And then, as I grew even older, I learned to appreciate it. Not routine, tradition. It was comforting. Relaxing. Meditative, even. I could see why my dad enjoyed doing it so much. And, finally, why he wanted to do it together. There were so many things to do.

Cutting open the pumpkin. Pulling out all the innards. Separating the seeds for later. Cutting the pumpkin. Steaming it. Mashing it. Mixing it.

And then, one year, he wasn't there. And I stood, alone, in the kitchen.

Cutting open the pumpkin. Pulling out all the innards. Separating the seeds for later. Cutting the pumpkin. Steaming it. Mashing it. Mixing it.

It didn't come out the way it used to. It was too sweet. Something had gone wrong in my mix. It wasn't the same. Nobody said anything about it at dinner. They smiled and complimented me on making such a wonderful pie. I smiled politely back at them.

And the next year, when he came back, we didn't make pie.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Side effects include constant irritability, being an ass.

It was a typical day in MUS 307 . A typical day where nobody pays attention to anything the professor talks about. A day where people play shitty flash games instead of take notes. A day where people sit and refresh their Facebook newsfeed instead of follow the slides. A day where people roll their eyes and go to sleep instead of listen to the music examples. A day where people get up and leave ten minutes before lecture ends instead of having the God damn decency to stay the whole time and pretend to be interested. I mean, if you're going to be so unaffected by the music we're studying in class then why the fuck did you take the class in the first place? Fuck it makes me mad. And I haven't even started talking about that fucker who sits in the back and tries to whistle along with every song that gets played in class. Alright, dude, we get it: you are just too cool and you know everything about jazz, ever. You know every standard ever written and everybody's so...

So, I mean, there's that.

So I went to church again. I slept through most of it but I woke up to hear this: "Oh Lord you are holy indeed. You are a fountain of holiness." Dang, I thought. That is pretty holy. I saw The Nightmare Before Christmas again recently. That is still one of my favorite movies. I never get tired of watching it for some reason. I remember the first time I saw it quite clearly. I was about 5 years old at the time, I think. My dad and I were in the Albertson's video store looking for something to watch as was our Friday night custom. I walked through the aisle, glossing over the scary movies as quickly as I could without looking like I was scared. My dad pulled me aside with a video in hand. "What do you think about this one?" He held up a cover with a skeleton on the cover and 'nightmare' in the title. "It doesn't look very good." I said nonchalantly. "It looks lame." I rolled my eyes and turned away, playing it cool....

Pseudo-science (like psych).

I consider myself a man of science. I try to approach problems and deal with them logically, using observations previously recorded to handle new problems. So of course my interest was piqued when someone I knew posited that men are needier and more complicated than women. An interesting theory. But to properly examine it, one must understand the concept of sexual selection and its two aspects: male competition and female choice. Which brings us to point one: men are needier [in relationships] than women. This is true. In a natural/primal setting, the males are generally love-'em-leave-'em kinds of guys. Their main objective is to reproduce as much as they can. Humans, in their infinite wisdom, have decreased the emphasis on this to the point where it has become a footnote in male purpose. Civilization dictates that, instead of finding a partner for the sole purpose of reproduction, males find females for life companionship. With the effective removal of their natur...