After long gray year, sunshine - and pie - slowly improves things.
My dad believed happiness was a choice.
He used to tell the four of us kids that you could determine your mood if you were willing to work at it. Wake up with a headache or some generalized malaise? Get up, get dressed and get to work. Bummed because it’s the fourth, fifth, umpteenth day of rain and no sun? Take a drive in the country or pull some weeds, scour the weather report for the next sunny icon or be glad you’re not in the path of a tornado. Bored? Read a book. There are “millions” of them lying around this house. Got your heart broken — by a job or a contest or a boy? It’s OK to be sad, but eventually you’ve got to move on. Don’t let the disappointment or heartache define you.
(A fun fact indicative of how he thought and who he thought he was: My dad hated the guy in George Jones’ “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” dubbing him at various times “pathetic,” “a loser” and a “real wimp.” Fun fact #2: So did George Jones.)
I used to tell my friends that my dad was the dictionary definition of “fake it till you make it.”
He believed his troubles were his own and there was no purpose in bringing others down with him. So he tried — and he was usually pretty good at it — to put on a happy face and change his mood.
Maybe, he embraced that philosophy because he grew up during the Great Depression and was a teenager during World War II, when everyone had it hard and so many people had it worse than he did. My dad grew up in Indiana, the third child and only son of a physician who married late in life and didn’t start his family until he was well into his 50s. He lived in a big house on a wide street with magnificent trees providing shade from
the hot Indiana sun. There were friends nearby, and his grandmother — his mother’s mother who they called “Nanny” — came to live with them. She was a Bridge player, and she baked pies. In the summers, my grandfather sent his family (children, wife, and mother-in-law) to stay on a farm in southern Indiana where the trees grew thick in the hollers, the humidity was soft and caressing, the days were full to overflowing and almost endless for a growing boy.
By all accounts, it was a great time to grow up, and yet sometimes, during the lean years of the Great Depression, my dad’s father was paid in eggs or garden truck; some bills for babies or broken bones were paid a few cents a month for years or were, when all was said and done, never fully paid off. During WWII, most of the doctors in Michigan City (and likely everywhere else) left town to serve the troops; and my grandfather, in his mid 60s by that time, became one of the few doctors left in town, responsible for all the house calls and office visits and surgeries in a city of about 25,000. He worked around the clock and the work took a toll on his health; sometimes my dad went with him on calls just so he could drive him home. One day, my grandfather had a heart attack while shoveling snow. He didn’t die, but he was effectually sidelined for the rest of his life. My dad called him a stateside casualty.
When my dad was a junior in college, he got a message from home: his father had suffered a second heart attack and was gone. In what was a much different time than today, one of his professors (math, I think) told him that, even though his father had just died, he would not be allowed to delay the exam scheduled for that afternoon. No make-up test; no incomplete. So my dad took the test before taking the bus home to bury his father.
Despite all this — despite the hardships and uncertainty of his childhood, the Depression and the war, despite growing up with a father who was often absent or unavailable because of staggering workloads and entrenched gender roles, despite moving into adulthood without the role model he most loved and admired — my father wrote these words to my mother shortly before they were married:
“As I was driving along today, I got to thinking how lucky I am. I’ve had nothing but good breaks all my life, but the luckiest thing that ever happened to me was having you fall in love with me.”
My parents were married 56 years. Like all people they went through hard times, times when they struggled to stretch a dollar or butted heads over how to raise a rebellious child or just grew weary and frustrated over their day-to-day routines. But by all accounts, it was a good marriage and a strong partnership.
My mother died one month and two days after their anniversary. It was sudden and shocking. She had just finished the lunch dishes, sat down on the living room couch to watch a “Waltons” rerun on a high-numbered cable channel and had a massive stroke while she was taking off her shoes.
Stunned and overwhelmed, we went through the motions in those next fragile days, unable to stand still lest we shatter in the silence, unable to move lest we find ourselves irretrievably lost. Then one day — was it weeks later? or months? — my dad packed up all her clothes (well, not all of them but a hefty portion) and took them to Goodwill. He never spoke of the excruciating chore. And soon after, we went to dinner at a downtown restaurant with a patio where college students walked by, where little kids laughed, where beautiful couples held hands and leaned into each other in intimate exchanges. And somewhere on the wind, someone whispered — or I heard it in the chatter of the restaurant diners or the rhythm of the footsteps on the sidewalk, “It’s OK. Life and the world go on.”
A couple weeks later we took other tentative steps into the sunshine: tickets to an Alan Jackson concert. In the fall, we went to see “King & I” at a dinner theater in a nearby town.
That was the faking it part.
I don’t know if my dad ever got to the making it part.
A month or so before he died, when he was staying at a rehab center to regain some strength after a series of medical emergencies, we had dinner with an old farmer named Ken. Ken was 99 and, like my dad, was in rehab following a short stay at the hospital. Before he retired, he said, he was a banker and dairyman. He spent some time telling us about his wife, who had died fairly recently after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for three years. Once Ken had left the table, my dad said, “It would be terrible being like him.” He shook his head like he was deeply disappointed for the old farmer. “Losing his wife like that.” We reminded him of his wife, our mother, who he loved as a partner and friend, and of all the years they shared. At that point our mother had been gone for almost 11 years. “I know,” my dad said, “I sure would hate to lose her.”
***
I’m sure I’ve told this story before. My dad was a singer of silly songs. He didn’t sing in church, and he seldom sang along to the radio (although he was a fan of country music, went to the Grand Old Opry once, and met Roy Rogers in an elevator at the Houston Fat Stock Show). He did not whistle while he worked. But when he got into the car, he had the music in him. As far back as I can remember, he would regale us with tunes about “bowlegged women” and “Peter, Paul and Moses.” We were kids; we thought those little ditties were so funny so he sang them all his life.
But in his last few years, he would start each car trip with this: “It’s a lovely day today / so whatever you’ve got to do / You’ve got a lovely day to do in in, that’s true …”
It was a song from his salad days, written by Irving Berlin for a musical no one’s ever heard of and recorded by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Doris Day and Perry Como. These days, it’s used in a car commercial.
"It’s a lovely day today / And whatever you’ve got to do / I’d be so happy to be doing it with you.”
No matter the length of the trip or the vehicle or the type of day — sunny, snowy or gray. It became his code of the road. Say it — or sing it — often enough and it will, indeed, be a lovely day. Kind of like a mantra. Or a prayer.
***
I’m not so good at the faking part.
My father died a year ago this week.
And I can’t pretend: I still feel the loss every minute of every day.
I feel the gray, like a cloak on my shoulders. It wraps around me, weighs me down, yokes me to an unrelenting storm. I keep my attention trained on the skies, looking for a break in the clouds. Sometimes, unexpectedly, I see patches of blue and I struggle to understand if the clouds are gathering or breaking up. Sometimes, I know, the color is my choice and I still choose the gray.
But I’ve been through this before and I learned then that sunshine sneaks up on you with little steps.
So sometimes — even when the skies are leaden and the clouds hang heavy and low along the mountains and the rain drenches yet another day — sometimes I can still hear my dad singing a song that seduces the sun.
And I am my father’s daughter, so sometimes now, increasingly, I too believe in a lovely day.
The Pie:
Hoosier Pie
(or Sugar Cream Pie)
Apparently, this Sugar Cream Pie is the state pie of Indiana. Who knew?
My dad was from Indiana. He was born in Michigan City, a small city across Lake Michigan from Chicago, and his father owned a farm near the Indiana-Kentucky state line. He left Indiana when, as a newly-drafted private in the U.S. Army, he moved to Texas for basic training. He never lived in Indiana again, but he always loved it.
And yet, until very recently, I had never heard of Hoosier Pie.
This pie is basically sugar and cream baked in a pie crust and dusted with nutmeg. It is said to be a Depression-era recipe because it uses so few ingredients, only five basic ones, and because those ingredients were allegedly in every woman’s kitchen. I however do not, on the regular, have whole cream or half-and-half or fresh nutmeg in my kitchen.
But, this is a really delicious pie that is worth the trip to the grocery store.
Before I made this pie, I had never used fresh ground nutmeg. I actually had never even seen a whole nutmeg until recently and had no idea why anyone would go to the trouble of grating their own nutmeg when ground nutmeg is both tasty and readily available. However, when I mentioned my nutmeg naivete, my cousin set me straight. Fresh nutmeg is better for the same reasons that everything else is better when it’s fresh. The texture is better, the flavor more pronounced and the aroma enhanced. And by enhanced, I mean almost overwhelming. So shout out to Bruce Malone. He was absolutely spot on about the nutmeg.
This is the only recipe I found that suggests stirring the half-baked filling with your finger. I did that, proving that I too may be half-baked. You don’t have to.
Another thing worth mentioning is that, like all time-tested and beloved recipes, there are variations on the Hoosier Pie theme. Some do not use the nutmeg. Some are cream only, not diluted or lightened by half-and-half. This is the only recipe I found that suggests stirring the half-baked filling with your finger. I did that, proving that I too may be half-baked. You don’t have to.
The recipe
Single pie crust, rolled out and fit into a pie plate, crimped and frozen
1½ cups heavy cream
1/2 cup half-and-half
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 ounces (just under 1 cup) granulated sugar
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
Fresh nutmeg, for grating
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, broken into small pieces
In a medium bowl, whisk together the cream, half-and-half and vanilla. In a separate bowl, whisk together sugar, flour and salt. Mix the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients and set aside until ready to fill the pie.
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Place the frozen pie shell on a baking sheet and grate an even layer of nutmeg over the bottom of the crust. Scatter the butter pieces over the bottom of the pie shell. Slowly pour in the filling.
Bake the pie on the center rack for 10 minutes. Stir the filling in the center, using your finger (this is allegedly the traditional way but I don’t necessarily recommend it) or a spoon. Make sure to stir carefully and shallowly so that you don’t damage the crust.
Turn the heat down to 325 degrees and bake for 30 to 35 minutes. Shake the baking sheet every 8 minutes to keep the sugar from settling and to create a thick, creamy filling. The pie is done when the edges are set but the pie’s center continues to jiggle. While the pie is still hot, grate nutmeg over the top of the pie.
Let the pie cool for at least 2 hours before slicing.
This pie is good garnished with fresh fruit.
Pie will keep, covered in the refrigerator, for several days.
(Original recipe from “50 Pies, 50 States” by Stacey Mei Yan Fong.)
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