I remember it like it was yesterday. The pears on the counter..the smooth dough rolled out...the way it touched something deep inside of me when she let me help. The way she always measured me on the door frame of the cupboard and wrote my name as if I wasn't just a visiting neighbor, but like I belonged...in such a way that it seemed I became a part of the beam that held up the wall of her house. I had seen apple pie, but this was an apple pie made from pears...pears that grow on trees..the kind that overflow the branches of neigbors trees so that they bend to the ground and sometimes break. The really hard ones that little old ladies give away in paper bags at church and most people won't take.
Little did I know that a seed was planted that day...a seed that would not produce fruit for 30 some odd years. Today as I am baking Thanksgiving pies..I remember it like a flood..I am truly thankful.
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit. ~Nelson Henderson
