Baking a pie

I like apple pie.
It's best 10 minutes out of the oven with a scoop of french vanilla ice cream.

The ice cream slides off the pie like a 5 year old boy screaming with joy on the playground.

The first bite reminds me of that one apple tree in my grandma's back yard. The grandkids would pick the tree bare each autumn so grandma would bake us a pie.

We called our grandma, memere, which is slang for grand mere in French.

Her freezer always had ice cream in it. Her favourite was Napoleon (neapolitan). But in the fall, she traded in her napoleon flavoured ice cream for french vanilla.

Apple pie is unremarkable without the ice cream. I've tried it and have been disappointed too many times.

My memere made the best apple pie. I'm sure you'll disagree with me. But she's gone and so is her apple pie, so we will never be able to settle that argument.

It's the first day of Autumn and I can't help but think of those apple pie days in my youth. Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer never had so much fun.

Yet today, I am reminded that my children's memories are as relevant as my own. My best memories are based on those simple experiences. I have to keep that in mind as I create memories for our kids.

It's not the big adventures, the grand gestures nor the latest toys.

The best memories are simple as apple pie. Sitting at my Memere's kitchen table eating a fruit that was picked the day before by me and my cousins.  And adding a scoop of French Vanilla ice cream just because today is a special day.

Where's your apple pie? And what's the scoop of ice cream that is going to put your simple pie into the "best ever" category.

Go make memories.
That's all we have, when all the other stuff rusts away.