Feast

Photo by Alan Levine via Flickr

When I was little my mom used to make the most delicious rhubarb custard. Sometimes she made it just as a custard, sometimes she baked it into a pie. At least, that's the way that I remember things. All I really remember is that there came a time after leaving home that I began longing for the taste of rhubarb custard.

One day in town I noticed that a small bakery had a sign advertising 'Rhubarb Pies'. I think I managed to ignore it for a week before I finally broke down, pulled in one day after work and bought myself a rhubarb pie. (And when I say 'myself' I really do mean myself, because I was single at the time so there was no family to steal share my pie. Although given my children's food selectiveness, I am fairly certain I still don't have to worry.)

I returned home, carried my prize inside, got out a plate and opened the box. Only to find that it was NOT the rhubarb custard pie of my dreams, but some sort of rhubarb travesty of the gelatinous goo variety. Now, I do enjoy a good rhubarb crisp or crumble. But at that point in my life, rhubarb belonged in two forms...a crisp, or a CUSTARD pie. It just never occurred to me that someone would create a rhubarb pie that was not a custard. (But then, I'm also of the opinion that most fruit pies should just give up and be crisps instead, as God intended them to be. It's all about the crumbly topping.)

I probably ate it anyway, sharing the taste and my disappointment with my roommate. Later she gave me her mother's recipe for a rhubarb custard pie, and there were two of them cooling on my counter as I wrote this, over twenty years after that day.

Life hands us disappointments like that sometimes. We think we're getting one thing but we open the box to find out that it's not exactly what we anticipated. The base ingredient is the same, but the sweet taste of custard gives way to something with more tartness, less sugared. Maybe its a family life that isn't quite as you pictured it to be. The children are more rambunctious, more opinionated than you ever expected. The spouse leaves dirty socks laying on the floor and wears t-shirts with holes in them. (Any resemblance to specific spouses and children is purely coincidental and not to be construed as a portrait of an actual person.) The pretty new house has plumbing problems or noisy neighbors or an odd way of settling with creaks and groans at night. You take a job as administrative assistant at your church and then the pastor moves (true story). Friends who you thought would be around for years move a world away (also true story). (OK, Canada, they move to Canada. It feels like a world away.)

We get something other than what we wanted. But there, waiting on the sidelines are the friends who sit down with us and share in the feast anyway. And they listen to us talk about what we wish had been and they help us to find what we need to make something new.

I can't promise that disappointment will always lead to something sweet. You may need to eat a lot of gelatinous goo. Maybe you'll learn to like gelatinous goo, or at least appreciate it for what it is without expecting it to be custard. Sit down anyway. Sit down with your friends and your neighbors with your disappointments and their disappointments and dig in. Share in the tart and the sweet and the bitter. Eat with them the taste of tears and longings unfulfilled. And then go to the kitchen together. Pull out the flour and the sugar, the spices and the eggs. Set yourselves to baking something new, something that may turn out and maybe not. But bake anyway. Mix your hopes and your dreams, your longings and your prayers.

And feast together again and again.

Comments

  1. If I've never told you this...you are gifted! Oh so true - and I agree with the custard only version - unless it is strawberry - rhubarb jam! And as soon as you gave acquired the cat - I knew something was up! The next announcement was the move! It's always a toss up - friends - cat - friends? - take the cat and enjoy the purring and the unconditional love! Thanks for sharing!

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    1. Thank you! (Also, I actually didn't know about the move before we acquired the cat.)

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