Set the table with iced tea (no sugar) in jewel-toned aluminum tumblers and a basket full
of hand pies, and then laugh at the old stories until the tears roll down your cheeks.
There was a book with a blue cover and big pictures that my mom used to read to me and that I later memorized and read to her: “Who are you? What’s your name? Would you like to play a game? Let’s pretend we’ve never met. I’ll ask you questions, Now get set?”
The book is in the bookcase in the back bedroom, tattered from use but now long unread. I’m still asking the questions.
Maybe the search began when I entered Irving Junior High, preceded by the reputation of my older brother who had already been there for two years. My brother didn’t like school by then; maybe he never did. He had dyslexia, which educators and parents didn’t fully understand at the time, so what was easy for others was a chore for him. He wasn’t a bad kid or a troublemaker, just ready to move on. By the time he was in ninth grade, he was skipping class and maybe lighting a cigarette off school property with his friends, some of whom were indeed bad boys. One semester, maybe my first one in the new school, my English teacher, on the very first day when she was taking roll and assigning seats, asked me if I was related to Louie. With some pride, I said yes, and she made me sit in the front row, out of alphabetical order.
That might have been the first time I realized that my identity transcended myself. If his transgressions, however minor, became my transgressions without guilt, was my selfhood my own or was it an amalgamation of other things, other people, other experiences, other stories not my own? We are, it occurred to me — it occurs to me still — a product of tiny tidbits of history, imaginable but untouchable, that we have no agency over.
Was I him?
My mother was the middle daughter, the sixth of nine children, of a Nebraska farm family, raised (mostly) on the prairie where milo and corn grow on the gently rolling landscape, in a white farmhouse with a big front porch and tiny rooms teeming with children: Max and Helen, Bill and Mary, Jim and Gwennie and Fritzie, Janet and Bud, each of them with the open faces of their Irish ancestors, freckles sprinkled on their cheeks by harvest sunshine, and the hearty laughs afforded by security and joy.
Am I them?
She grew up during the Great Depression, came of age during World War II, became a young adult, a young wife, a young mother during the sweet prosperity of the 1950s and early ‘60s. Her siblings — spanning a full 20 years — went through some iteration of that same script.
My grandfather, Fred Malone, was a big man who wore bib overalls, smelled like spearmint gum and was beloved by his children, each in their turn believing that they were the favorite. He was restless as a young man, constantly on the lookout for a better situation, a better job, a better piece of land on which to raise his growing family. The story is that for awhile when my mom was about ready to start school, my grandfather rented a farm just outside the same town that I live in now. They settled here because it was supposed to be better for his asthma; but within a couple years, the man who owned the farm decided to sell. He offered it to my grandfather, but my grandfather, who by that time had seven children, didn’t have the $300 he needed for a down payment. They ended up back in Nebraska, no more than 30 miles from where he was born. He lived out the rest of his life there.
My grandfather died when he was 72. It seemed an early death. He had a heart attack while he was mowing the lawn. My cousin, a girl of about 12 at the time, found him laying in the yard and thought he was napping. I was about 5. I don’t really have my own memories of him, but the stories of others have become my own.
My grandmother, on the other hand, lived to be one month shy of 100. She was a mighty woman as was any woman who raised nine kids during the Great Depression. She was loving
and stern at the same time, ready to roll up her sleeves and get to work, all while wearing a pretty dress and good shoes. She was a church-goer — “a Methodist, Methodist, Methodist till she died,” as the song goes — and a believer. Once, when I was with her, she tsk-tsk’d at a stranger for mowing his lawn on a Sunday, in her mind a violation of the fourth commandment, although I’m sure she was never in her life able to observe the Sabbath as a day of rest. Not with nine kids, 26 grandkids and a stream of greats and great-greats that just keeps on keeping on. After she was widowed and had gone to live in a retirement apartment in Lincoln, when we visited from Colorado, she would stand by her living room window and watch for us to drive into the parking lot. I used to wonder how long she waited and if she waited for others like she did for us.
My grandfather used to cry when we left
My mom always insisted that her brothers picked on her incessantly. I suppose that’s the lament of little sisters across the ages. Bud was the baby, beloved and spoiled. Jim, my mother’s closest sibling, was her tormenter. Max and Bill were both much older than she was, driving and working on the farm when she was still just a child. They used to ask her if she wanted to go for a drive, and my mother, who all her life wanted to take a trip, just for the sheer joy of movement, would run out to the car, excited as only a child can be for the imminent journey. Then one or the other of those boys, or maybe both, would saunter out to the car, get in, start the engine, and drive into the garage. When she would holler with indignation, they would laugh and laugh, maybe until the tears ran down their cheeks. They were still laughing when they were old and gray.
Because she adored them, my mom never grew cynical enough to reject the joke.
She had a more complicated relationship with her sisters, as girls do. They were her first friends, her best friends, but often her biggest irritants. I received a letter last week from my mom's dear childhood friend, and in it she said: “I don’t remember ever hearing a cross word or even a hint of any argument between any of them.” She was wrong but it’s a lovely fantasy. They shared beds and bedrooms, later apartments in the city where they learned to be women, and they often butted heads, as sisters do, and fed petty jealousies and unfounded judgments. (My mom locked her sister, Mary, in a room under the stairs — yes, just like Harry Potter — because she didn’t want Mary to wear her shoes.) But they loved each other and stayed close through all the times of their lives.
My dad moved to Lincoln for a job as a writer and editor for a breed magazine after he returned from Korea. He met my mother, who was working in a furniture store at the time, on a blind date, set up by a mutual friend who would later be the best man at their wedding. They got married in a little white church in a tiny town with a storybook name about a year after that fateful date. They had their first baby about 16 months later and moved to Colorado three weeks after that, 600 miles away, with a newborn laying between them on the bench seat of their new station wagon, the first time my mother lived away from her family. They never lived in Nebraska again, although I’m pretty sure that a day never passed that my mom didn’t wish she was back there, close to the family that made her.
My mom and her sisters, as grown women with families, used to sit around the kitchen table, drink iced tea (no sugar) in jewel-toned aluminum tumblers and tell stories. Sometimes they would confer about parenting challenges, giggle about books and movies and sex, or speak in hushed tones about family scandals — with that many people, there were quite a few to choose from. But most memorably they recounted tales about growing up in that big family, joking and laughing until the tears rolled down their cheeks and the men shook their heads in amazement and someone had to leave the room to calm things down. That laughter, I think, is the soundtrack of my childhood and the defining characteristic of my mom’s family. In fact, in the letter from my mom’s old friend, she mentioned that: “I spent so much time with (the Malones). They were such a happy family. Every one of them had such good humor.”
I hear that laughter still, seek solace in the memory, try to pull it from my DNA.
"I spent so much time with (the Malones). They were such a happy family. Every one of them had such good humor."
My uncle Bud died last weekend. He was the baby of the Malone family, an identity he relished and joked about his whole life. He was also the last surviving child of Fred and Ruby Malone. He’d been ill for awhile, but each time he rallied. This time, his daughters came to be with him, hold vigil, but he rallied and they went home. When news of his death came, unexpected, it was a gut punch.
It is a loss overwhelming and unbelievable.
My cousins in these past days have mentioned a reunion in Heaven, Malones gathered around a grand table, clinking glasses filled with iced tea (no sugar) in a salute to family, to being together, to eternity. It’s a lovely image, full of comfort and hope, but I feel the emptiness here on Earth. I feel somehow unmoored. As if a part of my very self has been turned over like the dirt of a grave, laying bare questions without answers.
Who am I without them?
My mother has been gone for 10 years, my brother almost 23. I live with my father now; he’s 92 and I’m trying to help him navigate these final years of his life, however many he — however many we — may be blessed with. I mostly appreciate this gift, but sometimes I feel totally subsumed by it, as if I no longer have an identity outside of the responsibility and the chores, outside of the frustration and grief, outside of him. Sometimes I feel lost and angry and unknown to even myself.
So I try to hold on. I try to do better. I try to be better. I try not to look too far forward.
This week, it’s been hot — an early summer heat come on with surprising speed — and my energy for good intentions is wilting in the sun. The yard work has to wait and the housework has to wait and the drives in the country — my father’s favorite past time these days when other joys have been diminished — grow longer and more languid. There’s been time for thinking.
I ask myself, again and again, in so many ways, who am I without them? Who am I now? Who am I going forward?
I am the proud sister of that junior high trouble seeker. I am the big sister of a devoted educator and the sister-friend of a brilliant, compassionate health-care worker. I am the aunt, hopefully beloved, of missionaries and poets. I am the niece of heroic men who took up arms to save the world and laid them down to build a life. I am the spitting image of strong women who stood in for those men, who stood beside them, who stood on their own. I am the granddaughter of a farmer who was afraid of rats and a farmwife who wore pretty shoes. I am the daughter of a writer, a teacher, a lover of dogs and cattle, a singer of songs about lovely days and beautiful mornings and detours. I am the daughter of a woman whose laughter — dare I say giggle? — and the tears that ran down her cheeks sustain us still and echo.
They echo in me.
The Pie
According to cooking history (who knew there was such a thing?), before people were smart enough to take their lunch to work in a box, they created hand pies. Men wanted meat to fuel them in the middle of the work day, so women created crusts to wrap around the meat to make it portable. The crust was cursory at best, not intended to be tasty because once at work, the men ate the meat and threw the crusts away. But at some point, it occurred to the women that this was a wasted effort. Why, they asked themselves, are we making something that no one is going to eat. So they set out to change that and created the flaky, buttery, delicious pastry we all enjoy today. I don’t know when lunchboxes came along, but hand pies are still a thing.
My parents used to frequent a German bakery in Loveland. It started as a tiny shop with a couple of tables inside and three or four picnic tables outside, but the pastries were so delicious that it soon moved into a much bigger place down the road and started selling deli foods and meals. I think my mom was kind of in love with Harry, the German baker who owned the place. He had a quick smile, deep dimples and a good word for everyone who came through his doors, especially appreciative women like my mom. He sold hand pies, and my mom ordered them on many Sunday mornings.
Because they're portable, hand pies make great additions to potluck dinners, family reunions or picnics, like the one I recently prepared for my sister and sister-in-law as a celebration for the post-pandemic OK to travel.
The RecipE
Hand pies
On a floured surface with a floured rolling pin, roll the crust (recipe below) into two sheets about 1/8-inch thick. Cut into 4-inch circles. You should be able to get about 10 hand pies from this recipe.
Place a small scoop of filling (recipes below) on half of the circles. Brush along the edge with a beaten egg. Cover with the remaining circles of crust. Pinch the top and bottom crusts together until the hand pie is sealed. Using the tines of a fork, seal it again to make a decorative edge. Clean up the edges with a knife or 4-inch round cookie cutter. Using a small knife, cut a tiny slit of an X in the top of each pie. Place on a baking sheet, at least ½ inch apart, and then sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar.
Bake in a 450-degree oven for 25 to 35 minutes or until the hand pies are a golden brown. Remove from oven and transfer to a wire rack. Let them cool for at least 10 minutes before eating.
Store in a basket on your counter, covered loosely with a towel, for up to a week.
Filling
I doubled the crust recipe and made both Blubarb and Apple-Raspberry hand pies, but you can use any fruit combinations that tantalize you. Just keep in mind that you don’t want a filling that will juice too much in the oven.
BLUBARB
6 cups fruit, some combination of fresh blueberries and rhubarb, diced into ½-inch pieces
½ cup granulated sugar
6 tablespoons cornstarch
Combine the fruit and the sugar in a saucepan. Bring the mixture to a boil and then reduce heat and let simmer, until the rhubarb begins to soften. Try not to let the blueberries burst. Remove from heat and let cool. Gently mix in the cornstarch.
APPLE-RASPBERRY
Some combination of fresh raspberries and Granny Smith apples, diced into ½-inch cubes, to make 6 cups of fruit
¾ cup granulated sugar
4 tablespoons flour
Combine the fruit and sugar in a saucepan. Bring the mixture to a boil and then reduce the heat and let the mixture simmer until the apples begins to soften. Remove from heat and let cool. Gently mix in the flour.
All-Butter Hand Pie Dough
3 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
1 ½ teaspoons granulated sugar
1 ½ teaspoons salt
1 ½ cups (three sticks) unsalted European-style butter, cold
¼ cup water-vinegar mixture or more if needed*
Cinnamon and sugar for sprinkling
In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar and salt, and mix well. Place the sticks of butter in the bowl and coat the sides with the flour mixture. (Because European-style butter doesn’t get as hard in the refrigerator as American butter, it makes a flaky and tender crust. However, it you don’t have it on hand or can’t find it in your grocery store, don’t panic. Good old American butter is perfectly acceptable.) With a bench scraper or knife, cut the butter into cubes. Stir the cubes into the flour until they are separated and lightly coated with flour. Cut the cubes in half.
Using a pastry blender, cut the butter with one hand while turning the bowl with the other. Continue to blend and turn until the largest pieces look like large peas and the rest looks something like canned Parmesan cheese.
Add the water-vinegar mixture all at one, and using the bench scraper or a spatula, scrape as much of the mixture from one side of the bowl to the other until all the liquid is absorbed. Scoop as much of the mixture into your hands, and using the tips of your fingers and a lot of pressure, press it together against the side of the bowl. Rotate the bowl a quarter-turn and repeat. Scoop, press and turn until all the mixture is incorporated into one ball. If needed, add a little more water-vinegar. Work quickly and stop handling the dough once all the flour is incorporated.
Divide the dough into two equal parts, smash into disks, and wrap tightly with plastic wrap. Refrigerate the dough for at least 2 hours, or preferably overnight.
Note: You can use these same fillings in a regular pie, and in fact Blubarb pies are very popular among pie lovers. If you choose to go that route, there is no need to pre-cook the fruit; just pile it into the bottom crust in a 9-inch pie plate, cover with the top crust, seal the edges and add air vents to the top of the pie. Cook for 45-60 minutes in a 400-degree oven.
* To prepare water-vinegar, fill a 1-cup liquid measuring cup half way with ice cubes. Then fill it to the 1-cup mark with water and add 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar. Alternatively, put about 1 inch of water in a 1-cup liquid measuring cup and freeze. Once the water is frozen, fill the measuring cup to the 1-cup mark with cold water and 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar. Allow to stand (and melt) on the counter while you mix your dough.
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