THE PIE

Sometime in the early '90s, when Rick was still living here, he brought back a summer treat from his mom's house: a lemon cream pie.

When he pulled it from the fridge — after some complicated dinner we had spent hours making and that I no longer recall — I remember thinking how sweet it was for a mom to send her boy off with a whole pie, but I didn't have any expectations beyond an ordinary mom-baked pie. I may even have thought, with the snobbishness peculiar to 20-somethings, it wasn't a fitting end to the elaborate meal we just had.

Then he uncovered it and I felt a little jolt of surprise at its loveliness: a perfect cumulus cloud of whipped cream nestled in the circumference of a pale, flaky crust. When he cut into it and revealed the sunny layer of lemon, I let out a little "ahhhhhhhh." And when I tasted it, "mmmmmmmmm." Not just a regular "mmmmmmmmm," but an "mmmmmmmmm" that widens your eyes and crescendos into a question mark (Is it really this good?) before landing in a sharp exclamation point (Yes, it is!).

I had never been a big pie person before that, aside from Thanksgiving pumpkin, which I adored. Lemon pies had crossed my path, but they always had one or more unappealing elements: a weepy, flavorless meringue, a sickly sweet middle or a soggy crust. No one in my family had ever thought to dispense with the chore of beating egg whites into a stiff, formal meringue in favor of the easier and tastier task of whipping fresh cream into pillowy mounds. No one had summoned the nerve to ban the increasingly ubiquitous (and thoughtless) graham cracker crust at family gatherings.

Not long after our summer feast, Rick took off for the West Coast. So I never had the pie again, but it remained in my food-memory universe like a distant, beckoning sun, like the Platonic Form of the Lemon Pie (Hey, we were both philosophy majors).

Last year I asked him for the recipe. His mom snail-mailed it to him, and he dutifully typed it up into an e-mail with the subject line "The Pie" and endearing little notes in parentheses like "My mom says a key to good crusts is having everything cold, so start by mixing the flour and salt in a bowl and then place the shortening on top and put in the fridge until chilled"; or "My mom just uses the kitchen counter; you could also try one of those pastry mats"; or "Another tip from my mom is to not press too hard but to roll it out just a bit at a time."

A year after I got the recipe, I decided I was up to the task of actually making it vs. fantasizing about it. So with Erin's help and encouragement last weekend, the pie (pictured above) became a reality again.

It was beautiful and delicious — exactly what I remembered. (How often do resurrected memories live up to their promise?)

And the best thing: Rick is home for the holidays, so I can finally say, "Hey, I made your mom's pie." And maybe send him off with one.