A Second Slice of Pie

 

Sunday lunch is an event I look forward to every week.  No matter what kind of mood I am in, I always leave the table in a better place.  There are five of us “regulars” who meet at Homestead, a local restaurant with an extensive buffet that includes desserts – soft serve ice cream and various cakes, pies and banana pudding.  Fried chicken is always one of the choices, usually baked ham, and homemade yeast rolls and cornbread muffins.  We each have our favorites, especially in the dessert category and some of us have been known to eat dessert first.

Last Sunday buttermilk pie and fudge pie were on the dessert table.  Margaretta and I love buttermilk pie.  We love caramel cake too and Japanese fruit pie, but on this day, it was buttermilk pie.  Brenda loves chocolate and always chooses the fudge pie when it appears.  We all like ice cream.  Face it, we all like dessert.

Our lunchtime includes not only heaping plates; it also brings out the latest news around town, storytelling and lots of laughter.  It’s not a lunch hour – it sometimes stretches to almost two hours, unless there is an important football game on television.  There were no early afternoon football games Sunday.  Margaretta and I made short work of our buttermilk pie, Brenda enjoyed her fudge pie and John was eating chocolate ice cream.  “That pie was so good,” I said, licking the last bite off my fork.  “I could eat another piece.”  Margaretta made encouraging noises.  I decided to have ice cream instead.  When I returned to the table, Danny decided he would have some too.  “I wasn’t going to get ice cream,” he said.  “But Mary Beth’s and John’s looked so good.”  Someone else mentioned a second piece of pie and the next thing I knew, Brenda was up and back with another piece of fudge pie.  “Y’all kept talking about it, so I just decided to do it,” she said.

Margaretta pointed out that the slices were really small and I agreed.   I suggested that we could split a second piece of pie, but that idea was quickly shot down.  They were small slices, after all.  I finished my ice cream and got a second piece of pie.  “Do you want me to bring you one?” I asked Margaretta.  She shook her head.  But when I returned to the table, she was the next to get up, returning with her own second piece of pie. 

We were laughing almost too much to eat by then, and a couple of people stopped to mention that we seemed to be having way too much fun.  This is not the first time that comment has been made to us.  It’s not the first time I’ve had two desserts either.  And I might have eaten pie for breakfast once or twice.  Hey, it was strawberry pie, so it was fruit.  Right?  You only live once – sometimes you just have to do what makes you happy.  Eating a second piece of pie is a very small thing in the grand scheme of things.  But if you can’t break out of the norm with small things, how are you going to ever break out with larger things?  Extra dessert is just practice for bigger adventures.

Some of my best memories are from times I stepped out of my comfort zone.  The first time I took an airplane flight, I traveled to Denver for a livestock related competition, as a high school senior. (I expect this was a little out of my parents’ comfort zone, too, and I am grateful that they had the courage to let me do it.)  I flew to New York, alone, to a writer’s conference, where I knew not one single person.  It was a week full of new experiences, learning, getting feedback from successful authors and meeting people who shared the same dream.  I took my new horse, one I was still not quite comfortable with, to a show and decided to enter a class I had never tried.  Musical sacks, it was called, the equine version of musical chairs where you had to race to a sack on the ground when the music stopped, jump off your horse to stand on the sack, and repeat until only one horse and rider were left.  Sometime during the chaos of that class, I forgot to be nervous with her and won a good ribbon.  I drove to hundreds of horse shows, many times alone, and drove back late at night with only the radio for company. I made some of my best memories with friends I would never have met in my other “normal” life.  I was in my first play when I was almost fifty and uncovered a skill I didn’t know I had.  I drove to Memphis to visit a high school friend and see a concert.  I hesitated at first because it was a non-seated concert and it was a long drive, but we were captivated by experiencing the show from the edge of the stage.  I was inspired to go to another concert just like that one, this time alone in a strange venue.  I scored a spot on the edge of the stage, sandwiched between strangers, and had one of my best nights in years. 

 I have learned a valuable lesson from all these things. Don’t hesitate to eat the second piece of pie, or the extra cookies. Have birthday cake for breakfast, even if it’s not your birthday.  Take the trip, buy the new dress, use the fancy towels you got for Christmas, go to the concert, even if you have to go alone.  Ride your new horse in an untried event, jump in the deep end.  And be sure to hang out with people who will join you in a second piece of pie – those are the people you need in your life.