30-Day Blogging Challenge

Pie

Prompt    "Supposedly our sense of smell is strong enough to take us to very distinct memories. In a poem OR a story, recount a time, place or situation when someone's olfactory sense led them back to a memory."

When the man was a child he loved Sunday night dinners most of all.  His mother made fried chicken, or turkey or even meatloaf, but she also made pie.  Sunday nights were pie nights, and he loved nothing in the world as much as he loved pie.  He actually loved all pies, blackberry, blueberry, apple, mince, chess, strawberry-rubarb; and they could be made by anyone in the neighborhood, and be wonderful.  Mrs. Myers made a good pie, as did the old Misses Jenkins next door, although those two always made the child do chores for his slice of pie. But Sundays were a dream, he spent the whole day humming and skipping, waiting to smell the delicious aroma of pie crust fill the house.

His mother's pie was the best of all pies; flaky and warm, not too sweet, definitively not too tart.  But it was special mostly for the experience that came with it; she would sit with him after dinner, watching him eat every bite, enjoying his enjoyment of the moment.  She was a serious woman, hardworking and worn, who showed her only son love through her cooking.  Her eyes rested on him as he ate, listened to his prattle, smoothing down his hair.  She laughed out loud at his jokes and smiled kindly at his hopes, and he felt as if he visibly grew under her loving gaze, like a sunflower.

When he grew old, and had outlived his mother, his father, his wife, friends and even his daughter, he'd sit in the lounge of the home on Sundays and wait patiently for the aroma of dinner to come to greet him.  He never smelled pie baking, just the usual characterless smell of gravy and burnt oven, but he knew it was coming.  After dinner, when the plates were cleared and forks reset for those who needed them, when it was time for dessert, he waited with a tingling excitement.  He was lucky, lucky that he had these moments, that every Sunday at the home there was pie.  He cut into his pie and inhaled deeply to capture the smell. He felt his mother's hand on his head, he remembered her worn smile, and was happy.