Returning the Pie Plate

I was in the grocery store recently picking up a couple things for a pie (chocolate pudding, whipped cream, crust from scratch) I had promised a coworker. He had helped me out when I was without a car and therefore didn’t have a way to get to work, and I wanted to somehow convey my gratitude. So, pie.

I’m pushing the cart, deliberating between bags of sugar, wondering if I want sprinkles (I do), and when I look to my left, I see a whole magnificent display of aluminum baking pans. Loaf tins! Cake tins! Muffin tins! The big tins you use for the baked ziti you make for a church soup kitchen! And of course, pie tins. The sort you’d see in a black-and-white movie where someone gets the banana cream variety in the face.

At first, I felt butterflies. Nothing in the world felt as compelling and full of promise as a wall of bakeware. There were so many things I could make! And give away! And they were all just so shiny!

Did I need one? I wondered, answering instinctively, “Of course!” I was giving the pie away, so I’d need a pie plate I could give away, too.

Or did I?

I realized that I would be seeing this coworker pretty regularly. We lived relatively close to each other. We could even be friends. Wasn’t the point of something disposable, like this pie plate, freedom? Freedom from the responsibility of stewarding the dish indefinitely? Freedom from obligation, freedom from ties to another place or person?

And conversely, wasn’t passing off the “real” pie plate - a Pyrex one made of glass, no less - a weighty and breakable symbol of trust? Of commitment to community and place? A way of saying, “My dead grandmother gave me this pie plate, and I know you’ll take care of it and that we’ll see each other again, so you won’t try to steal it or break it and you can just hang onto the thing until next time”? A social contract wherein I give you something of mine, you steward it, clean it, and give it back? Maybe fill it with something else if we’re lucky?

The more I thought about it, the more the disposable pie plate felt sad, more a sign of alienation, loneliness, and impermanence. The sort of feeling I get when I remember that we produce food via the exploitation of others in faraway places whom we never have to meet, never have to look at in the face, in the eyes.

So anyway, pie. I used my best pie plate and dropped it off - overflowing with whipped cream, chilled chocolate pudding, sprinkles, and flaky crust made from scratch - at my coworker’s house, passed it off to his girlfriend, met their cat. And a week later, when we got to work, he pulled the plate out of the backseat, cleaned, ready for the next person. That felt like something else altogether. It felt like a sign of the relational and regional food system that was the antidote to exploitation. It felt like care. It felt like community. It felt like joy.