Berry Supreme Pie

I don’t really remember my grandma’s pies. At least not their actual taste, although I know they were always apple.

She was a bountiful cook, her home permiated with smells of fried onions and dill, something always roasting or simmering or stewing, never an empty space on the dining table. She hosted amazing family dinners, and then complained that we didn’t eat enough. And at the end she’d bring out a pie.

What I remember most are their beautiful edges. I remember the dough in her hands, pinched into a delicate rope by fingers worn down so much by housework, that by the time we moved to the states, her fingerprints produced only black smudges on official government docs. I can’t make that perfect edge. I’ve stopped trying. That 2-second faded loop in my memory more beautiful than anything I could ever replicate.

It was my sister who learned grandma’s secrets in the kitchen when she spent a year with my grandparents, and it was she who gave me grandma’s pie crust recipe. It’s simple and infinitely precious to me. And every time I roll out that dough, I think of her.