Aunt Carol’s Pie

Impossible Pie.

My Aunt Carol loved Impossible Pie.

I can’t remember exactly when she first made it for us – growing up it was just always kind of one of her things: if Aunt Carol was around, chances were good that there might be an Impossible Pie involved too.

Making this particular pie is easy, and fun, and no-fuss.   You stir together some ingredients: eggs, sugar, butter, milk, flour, and coconut, mainly… then you dump it into a baking dish and TAH DAH, out of the oven comes a fully made pie, having formed its own crust as it baked.

All the hard work goes on inside of the pie, and everything just kind of comes out like it should.

Aunt Carol was a lot like Impossible Pie.

Other pies are precise, with a carefully-made crust, and a finicky filling, maybe even an ornate top crust all layered up perfect and just-so.

But life isn’t like that, really, is it?  Your best-laid plans are always getting rerouted and mixed up and whirled all together.   And for a lot of people that can really throw you way off track.

Aunt Carol wasn’t one of those people.   Around her the joy and the pain and the hope and the trials and the EVERYTHING of real life swirled and swirled.   And she settled all the layers into a life full of the people she loved.

It was the same as she bravely battled cancer – the bowl was stirred, and inside of her body and soul so much work was going on to re-form the layers of her life…  things shifted and mixed and she moved forward, knowing they would settle again.

She was strong, and loving, and SO very funny – and all the layers of her combined perfectly.

This week my Aunt Carol’s battle with cancer ended .  Looking at pictures and thinking back on countless memories of her, I found myself in the kitchen, gathering together the ingredients to make Impossible Pie.

A simple recipe that I can make with Jr the way she used to make it with us, a way to share my memories of her, and let him share his –and a reminder from Aunt Carol that, in pie, and in life,  some of the sweetest rewards come from trusting in the impossible.