Dear Grandma Hilda

I still remember your honey apple pie like it was yesterday, Grandma Hilda, the one that smelled like cinnamon and cream. You refused to give me the recipe, though I was old enough to bake and you were old enough for a discount at the movie theater.

You picked me up in your old pink 1953 Corvette, the only one I ever knew. On sunny days, the top was always down, our wild hair flying behind us. Yours was white and spare, mine was dirty blond and wavy. You said the best movies only came out when summer was gone. It was the world’s way of telling us to play outside while we still could. On nice days we went to the Boston Common, where you always let me eat as many popsicles as my age. We sat on the blue blanket you made me before I moved away and we watched the dogs and the ducks and the college kids getting stoned.

I regretted growing older because I never got to spend as much time with you as before. Weekends were for friends, and daddy sold your pink Corvette once your cataracts made you a safety hazard on the road.

Still, through winter storms and blizzards we stayed together in your living room and kept the fireplace lit from sunrise to sunset. We knitted blankets so long we could both snuggle our feet inside. Mine were always slightly crooked, never perfect like yours.

But even our winters got divided once I graduated and went off to school in D.C. Each month, you’d send me a honey apple pie in the mail, saran wrapped so delicately that not a single inch was out of place when I opened it. That pie made me feel close to you, even though we were far apart.

One month I didn’t get your pie in the mail and that’s when I asked you for the recipe again. You said you would send me pie any time I needed it, you said you would make it for me whenever I wanted. You sounded tired that day, but I asked you for pie and five days later it came, like you said.  

That honey apple pie was extra sweet, a little better than the rest. It tasted heavenly; I remember keeping it in my dorm room longer than I kept the other ones, eating a tiny slice each night right before going to bed.

When the pie was finally gone, I felt my childhood had withered away, gone to where I could no longer taste it.

 That was the last honey apple pie you ever baked for me, Grandma Hilda. You could have given me the recipe, but I doubt it would have tasted the same.

By: Laura Moreno Saraga