Yesterday’s pie was a Bourbon Pumpkin that I forgot to tell the winner to refrigerate, so I have probably killed off her family today. Sorry about that.
I’m taking the day off from baking today. I am going to drink champagne all day instead.
I sat down to write out the looooong list of people I wanted to thank for all the support during NNPM, but then I realized as I sat here that there will be so many more to add to the list at the end and I want to save it all. But I do want to say that while the list is at least 30 people deep already, that what I am most grateful for is how the process seems so quiet this year with so few comments on my posts, and every single time that I think no one is listening I get a response from someone waving their hand saying they want a pie. It feels like reality rather than Facebook—where it’s not a popularity contest, but a wonderful realization that people are there we just have to listen. A challenge like this can be stressful in ways we don’t know. It brings up all sorts of emotions and thoughts and memories that make a person feel a bit insane. Maybe that’s why I do it because I want to prove I’m sane the rest of the time. Or maybe I just like the high of the adrenaline. There are lots of reasons, actually, and the main one is what I learn about myself and what am reminded about the world. People show up even if you haven’t screamed for help. Somehow they know, and maybe they don’t even know they know.
The other night I woke up around 2am having a panic attack about so many things that had nothing to do with pie, but other things in my life. NNPM pushes everything to the top. I was “on the verge” as they say, and couldn’t go back to sleep. So I picked up my phone and thought, I’ll look at a little Facebook to cheer me up. Facebook is not ever where one should go for cheering up. Every other post was someone’s pet who was ill, being put down, or dead. I had one of those long ugly cries. It lasted a couple of hours. The cry was a cathartic one, but puffy-eyed nonetheless. My entire life flashed before my swollen eyes as I remembered every single thing that I wish I had done differently. Why did dead pets take me down the long dark dangerous alley of regrets? Who knows. Blame pie. In the morning, I was lighter, albeit still weepy.
A couple of days later I had an interview with a pie baker and friend. Not someone I know well, other than pie, but the whole time was spent talking about letting go of things in life. From couches to regrets. Or maybe getting rid of the couch is symbolic of all the regrets. The conversation was as though we had known each other for years. Instead of an interview it felt more like we were reminiscing about our lives, as though we had known each other that long that our stories were the repeated ones we both still laugh at every time it’s told. Maybe it’s a pie baker thing—where we put a filling filled with all our most soulful moments into a pastry and pass it along to someone else and they eat it up with delight not knowing what all went in it, just trusting it was made with love. Maybe life is filled with both regrets and friends who we don’t even know are there.
All I know right now, from 3 weeks of NNPM, is there is so much to look forward to! You have to pass through the dark to get to the light. And, there will always be more pie.
I’m thankful for all three of you who read this post. I don’t know who you are, but I know you are there. Now, on to the celebrating.
