South Dakota rancher/poet/essayist Linda M. Hasselstrom celebrates a Thanksgiving tradition with a poem

(Editor’s note: Linda M. Hasselstrom’s evocation of holiday pie-making – illustrated above in a public domain photo published in wikimedia commons – was first published in “Empty Bowls 2006” by the United Church of Christ, Brookings. In 2011 it was published by The Backwaters Press in a collection titled Dirt Songs: A Plains Duet, with Twyla M. Hansen. We thank Ms. Hasselstrom for her permission to post it here.)

Those Thanksgiving Pie-Makers

All over America today, women search
for their grandmother’s pumpkin pie recipe.
Some rush to the store for condensed milk,
or whipping cream. Or stir up powdered milk
if they are poor, or on a diet,
or live too far from town.

In a Wisconsin farm house a red-haired woman
measures salt in a dented spoon.
In California, a thin girl stirs and puffs a cigarette,
puffs and stirs. In Wyoming,
I dust clove powder over my grandmother’s
green glass bowl and reach for the nutmeg grater.
In New Mexico, a brown-eyed woman
sprinkles cayenne. In Iowa, a man beats eggs,
recalling for his children how their mother looked.

Grandma always left me to measure
dry ingredients while she walked down
to her hen house. She came back holding four
warm brown eggs in her open hands
just as I licked brown sugar off my lips,
thinking she wouldn’t notice.

So today, twenty-five years after she died,
I lap brown sugar from a spoon just
so I’ll remember how she grinned at me.
While I stir, my oven beeps. Hers
was fired with wood she chopped. To test
the heat, she’d dip her fingers
in the water bucket she’d pumped full
that morning, flick spattering drops, and nod.

All over America, families are studying
gratitude. Some women slip
a pie into the oven, and hide
the cardboard box in the garbage.
Others light pumpkin-scented candles,
thankful anyway– though my grandmother
might not think they have good reason.

I crimp the rim of each pie crust
with three fingers, just the way
she taught me; make a salad
while the fragrance surges out
the open kitchen window. Next door,
perhaps the drug dealers open their eyes,
inhale, and almost remember.

Grandmother, may this pumpkin perfume
rise up to whatever heaven you inhabit,
sanctifying all my love and memories.
Listen: countless voices chant together
an infinity of thankful hymns.

© 2006, Linda M. Hasselstrom

South Dakota rancher Linda M. Hasselstrom writes poetry and nonfiction. She is the winner of numerous awards.  You can reach her at Www.windbreakhouse.com  or Facebook.com/Windbreakhouse