Sanctified Pie

DAD’S RASPBERRY PIE

When I was a boy, my dad planted two long rows of raspberries next to our vegetable garden.  Each spring, slowly working with shears, he pruned out last years dry canes, so the young plants could grow unhindered.   He carefully packed the ground around each new cane with clean yellow straw, so the soil would remain cool and moist.  When the weather was dry, he trailed soaker hoses along each of the rows, providing just the right amount of water.  The result of his work and attention were two rows of abundantly fruitful raspberry canes.

One morning I watched out our kitchen window as Dad walked over the wooden foot-bridge that spanned our stream, and across the yard to the raspberry patch. He was carrying a cardboard quart basket and he started walking slowly down the row, carefully placing fully ripened raspberries in the basket.  He didn’t have to work his way far down the row before his container was full, and he carried it back across the bridge, and up the back steps of the house.

The door opened, and he walked in holding out his palm which held a few of the berries that were especially plump and juicy, “Look how big these raspberries are!” He offered them to Mom to sample, having taken his fill directly from the bushes.

After Dad left for work, my mother dusted her countertop with flour, rolled out her pie crust, carefully settling the delicate pastry down into her 8” Pyrex pie plate.  She ladled the rich red, slightly sweetened mash of raspberries into the pastry, and covered it with the top crust.  A few deliberate cuts in the middle of the crust, a dusting of white sugar, and then into the oven it went, to bake itself into fragrant perfection. 

About an hour later she pulled it out of the oven, and placed it on a cooling rack. The tender, crisp crust had wisps of aromatic steam puffing through the vents cut into it.  My eyes watered, and I started to salivate.

My dad taught mentally handicapped teenagers for several years, so on this particular day, he walked in the door about 4:30, and start sniffing. The air was rich with the aroma of the baked raspberry pastry.  He smiled, and kissed my mother.

“Woman, you are my kind of a wife!  I married you to make me pies!”  She smiled back at him, and patted him on his backside with a twinkle in her eye.

My brother burst in the door, “Hey dad!” then he smelled the pie.  “Oh wow!  Raspberry pie.  That smells great.”

Dad sliced himself a large wedge of the pie, placed it on a plate, and sat at the kitchen table with his back to our wood cook stove.

“David, get me a fork please.” I turned, picked a fork out of the silverware drawer, and handed it to him.

He poked the tines down into the tip of his piece, lifted a large forkful to his mouth and began to eat immediately, even though dinner was not far off. My brother and I would have gotten in big trouble for doing that! But Dad had his priorities, and he was “the Father in the house” which allowed him to break his own rules sometimes.

Savoring the bite, his eyes closed, he extolled my mother’s many virtues.  My brother and I stood around, hopeful that he would feel generous.

Finishing off the piece of pie, only small flakes of the crust left, he glanced at his crestfallen sons.  “Boys, let me tell you about sanctification.  We are told to be sanctified only for God’s use.  Do you know what that means?”

Shaking our heads, we waited.

“Well, to be sanctified is kind of like this raspberry pie.  Your mother makes many pies…apple pies, pumpkin pies, cream pies…and raspberry pies.  All of the other kinds of pies are common pies.  That means that just about anyone can eat them.  They are made for general consumption.  But her raspberry pies are sanctified pies.  They have been set apart and sanctified only for my use.  God has told us to be like this raspberry pie…we are not meant to be common, but holy, sanctified, set apart for His pleasure.  Every time you smell this pie, and see me eating my pie, you can remember to be sanctified to God.”

And that was that.  No pie for us.  Not even a bite.  My dad, normally a very generous man, had disappointed his boys, but now, decades later, that memory, soaked in the sights and smells of my childhood, has left its indelible mark on my life, as I try to be like that raspberry pie.


Citation:
Clark, David. "Sanctified Pie". David's "My Writing" Computer File. 
Accessed: 27 January 2011.