while I’m learning
I slide my thumbs over the curves of an apple, holding it under the tap. Water splashes over Granny Smith green, green like early leaves with sun shining through. Before slicing in, before bruising the fruity flesh, I wash. The water chills my thumbs, my palms.
Zoe leans on the bar, suddenly open, telling me of feelings she sorted alone before, of bruises long healed. “I should’ve talked about it,” she says, the words flowing now like the water from the tap.
“Yes.” I nod, offering her a slight smile for encouragement, placing the last apple for the pie on a paper towel to dry. I turn toward the oven, silencing the timer that suddenly, impatiently interrupts. I lift out a baked crust with its shiny foil cover, then slide the pie plate onto a cooling rack with mitted hands. Pie weights rattle over the foil, rolling into the valleys. I make the pie without much thought, the movements flowing freely from memory, but Zoe’s conversation captivates my attention. I have known these things she shares; they are not a surprise, but this is the moment she has chosen to tell me. This is the moment she has chosen to listen, too. She reminds me of me finally spilling my guts before God, knowing He knows me by heart. She spreads the words out in front of me, showing me her heart, pausing occasionally for my response.
I place one of the apples on the cutting board and, using my sharpest knife, slice it in half. The sound is at first clean, then ragged. The blade thunks against the cutting board, scarring the wood. I quarter the halves, then pick them up to core one by one before slicing them thinly. I hold the quarters, carved free of seeds and womb, over a stainless steel mixing bowl. The slices collect, like papery bones, like manna falling. The sides of the bowl shine with light, and somehow it feels right, that shining, in a place where broken things will soon become something new.
“When I was about your age,” I tell Zoe, “I figured out that I could trust the people who love me to tell me the truth.”
She nods, gathering lengths of brassy hair in her hands, twisting it behind her head. “Yea, you guys always want the best for me,” she says, considering, “And I can’t always see the bigger picture when I’m in the middle of something.”
I stir the apples into sugar and cinnamon, a little bit of flour, a sprinkling of salt, gritty on my thumbs. The sugar rustles, a crunchy scraping as the slices slide, lifting and falling in the bowl. The air turns sweet and rich. The washing, the breaking, the tossing now, and then the heat before the apples become filling. I smile, thinking about how much is born of breaking and changing. Crusts, also. I lift out the foil now, making a sling for the pie weights. To the crushed, stripped wheat turned flour I added salt and butter–that, brutally sliced in–and water, before rolling new, tender dough flat with a wooden pen. Wood carries our little deaths.
I turn the coated apples out into the first crust and reach for my rolling pen to shape the second one. The secret to a good crust is knowing exactly how long to work it.
“Everything that has happened before–all that stuff you went through, all that struggling, it’s taught you things,” I say. Because in the hands of a good God, bruising and crushing and tossing–all our little deaths–become productive.
“Oh, it has,” Zoe says, sitting up abruptly, enthused. “It was awful, but it was good, you know?” She begins to list the ways she’s changed, while I roll the top crust around the pen, lifting it to gently lay it over the filling. I crimp the edges lightly between my thumb and my index finger. I pick up the knife to slice in tiny escapes for steam. Finally, Zoe says, “But next time I’m going to talk to you in the middle, and I’m going to talk to my friends. So I’ll feel less lonely while I’m learning.”
“Yes, I hope you will,” I say, looking up to smile into her eyes, thinking how blessed we are to love each other, how blessed we are to pray.
