Illustration by Marley Allen-Ash
First Person is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.
I bit into a blueberry this morning. I don’t know what field it came from, but as Mary Oliver wrote in her poem Blueberries, “berries are berries. They don’t speak any language I can’t understand.”
This blueberry tasted of deep, familiar sweet, and it spoke of my late mother. It whispered a memory to me of my favourite summer dessert – my mother’s famous blueberry pie.
I don’t know why we referred to it as famous. It’s not like she had her name on a billboard or anything, and she wasn’t known to households around the world. Yet, she somehow managed to capture the sweetness of summer in this pie.
There wasn’t a family member who could resist her blueberry pie.
“Who wants a piece of pie?” she’d ask, as if she had to ask.
I discovered the joy of hiking in my 30s
My siblings and I would watch as she sliced into her pie with a silver-plated pie server. My mother had tools for everything she served – a chiffon cake cutter that resembled my 1970s’ plastic afro pick, a teal and yellow floral-patterned deviled-egg plate with little cutouts for the eggs, grape scissors patterned with embossed silver vines.
While she sliced, we held onto bone china plates, our dessert forks standing by – who would get the first slice?
The first piece waited to be ordained by my mother’s shiny pie server. She would hold it, then ceremoniously form a small triangle, glide the metal gently underneath, and hoist the slice onto a small dessert plate. Without fail, the pie server emerged successfully – the blueberries had magically congealed and sat up straight, with perfect posture, on her taut, golden pie crust.
“Would you like some whipped cream on it?” she’d ask the lucky first family member.
“Yes please!” each of us would respond when it was our turn. If you were seated near the pie, you would be the first to notice an orphaned blueberry and snatch it before anyone else.
Under her spell, the blueberries came together as a congregation and let out a chorus of hallelujahs on your tongue before they surrendered to your teeth, leaving behind a trace of soft blue stain on pearly whites.
My mother’s blueberry pie tamed tempers, turned strangers into friends.
When my parents drove from Ottawa to the Muskokas to see us on visiting day at our summer sleepaway camp – a tradition that began with my siblings and I, and years later continued with our children – my mother always toted along her blueberry pie. She wrapped it ever so delicately, placing toothpicks strategically to ensure the pie did not leave a sticky, smudged mess on the plastic wrap, and packaged it for the five-hour drive in a cooler surrounded by ice packs. It was perfectly served on Royal Chinet.
Its legend drew passersby who didn’t have family visiting.
“Blueberry pie?” she’d offer. Who could resist.
I never realized how much I needed friends, until I didn’t have any
As our family grew, each new family member had the same reaction. My brothers-in-law could not argue with my mother’s pie. My husband always said yes to a first serving, and sure, a sliver more.
I have attempted to make my mother’s blueberry pie. I boiled some blueberries in water with a bit of corn starch added to the cold water, and added sugar and lemon juice. Since I don’t bake, I bought a crust. I used a kitchen knife to slice it and, with the help of a fork, managed to retrieve the first piece and gently plop it onto a plate. I looked at the slice, shrugged my shoulders and served it anyway.
I’m not a baker, but I can behold a sweet blueberry and time travel to my youth – to a pie, the embodiment of my late mother’s dedication to her baking craft, and to our family.
One little blueberry cast its spell on me for a moment in time.
In that moment was a world of summers past, of people and times, and a younger version of myself that I miss.
Lynda Taller-Wakter lives in Ottawa.