making an apple pie

My housecleaner is helping me go through all my cupboards, closets and drawers. I throw out a lot. I discover things I need that I forgot I had. And sometimes, he asks if he can have something.  I wish he did not ask because I like him and care about him but I don't like him asking for things I have kept and cared about for 30 or more years. Most of my 'treasures' are not treasures to anyone but me and they are treasures to me because I either associate them with my daughter or my mother.

I have a very good, fine kitchen knife that I paid $87 for about 30 years ago. It is a German knife. It is a knife you can use for just about anything. It can rock on a butcher board as you slice and dice.  I keep it in the box because it is such a fine knife. I don't want the edges getting knicked in my cluttered draws. Although my drawers are being decluttered.  My cleaner guy said, and I am still a bit flummoxed by what he said, "If you want to sell it, I'll give you a few bucks for it." He said this right after I had showed him the very faded $87 price tag and told him my mom had bought it for me when Katie was five or younger. So thirty years. My mom long gone. My daughter long gone. And my one good knife. My one great knife.  The model of my thirty years ago $87 knife is no longer sold by Wusthoff but simlar knives like it, also by Wusthoff sell for $129 and $139. Of course, the blades are steel. I wonder what Trump's tariffs might do to quality knife sales? Why would I sell my one prized, great knife, one I treasure so much I clean it, dry it and put it in the original box to keep it safe?And for a couple of bucks?

He saw a luggage tag on Tuesday and asked if he could have it. I had wondered what happened to the only luggage tag I had ever owned. I have new luggage but no tag. Last time I flew home from NYC, my bag came out of the luggage conveyor with no tag at all for I had used those paper bits the airlines offer with not-strong elastic. Gone.  Plus my suitcase came two airplanes behind my own.

Look at how I run on. This is about baking pies with my Katie.

She always wanted to help. She always wanted to imitate me. If I got on my knees and scrubbed a patch of our kitchen floor, she did her tiny toddler best to imitate me, sometimes pretending because she did not have her own scrubber.  I spent a lot of tie in our kitchen when she was very very young, and we still lived in Omaha. Our kitchen was mostly "L" shaped. In the corner of that 'L', under the cabinets, there was an air vent. She loved to sit in front of the vent, for cold air on hot days and warm air on chilly days. This allowed her to remain very close to me.

That vent in that corner was below the only real counter space we had. So when I baked a pie, I sliced my apples after peeling them. Oh, sometimes she and I went applepicking together. Sometimes we had open house in our home and served apple pie. The day before our open house, we would bake lots of pies all day, plenty to eat and enough, hopefully, so every household could take one home.

My favorite thing about making pies with Katie when she was one and two was how she helped.  She could not peel or slice the apples and risk getting cut. She could not yet measure the spices and sugar. So the way she helped me was she stood nearby, watching everything I did. I actually rolled out pie crust in those years. She watched me do so closely. After I had added sugar, cinnamon and whatever spices I was adding to the apples, she would stir the apples to spread the sugar and spices.

And then the very very very best part:  she would suck the sugar and cinnamon off a few slices.

It gobsmacked me that she did that, that she loved to do it, that she believed she was helping as my tastetester (as I had named the job).

I loved those pies. I loved her. I still do.  I don't remember kissing her on top of her head while making apple pies. For some reason, I started the head kissing as we listened for the cranberry poofing on our holiday pie. We would grow still. I felt much love (I guess she didn't, eh? I guess she loved to lick the sweet cinnamony pie slices? and I was a chump.)

Pies. It was a mother daughter activity I loved very much.

Sometimes, I managed to find some cinnamon ice cream to eat alongside our apple pies.

Those were the days. I thought the love embedded in them would never end.