Wendell Berry’s short but captivating and richer-than-life painting of his character’s grandmother is the best of the best writing there is to read. But it speaks to themes larger than me. After reading I was stuck in the middle of this piece, between the food writing. The piece is bookended by pie but the meat is in the middle.

“. . . I am troubled with love for her, knowing how she was wrung all her life between her cherished resentments and fierce affections. A peculiar sorrow hovered about her, and not only for the inevitable losses and griefs of her years. . . She was haunted, I think, by the suspicion of a comedown always lurking behind best appearances.”

The pie goes into the oven, and all of a sudden we are tossed into this flash-back inside a flash-forward inside a flash-back and here we find this deep emptiness. She was “wrung” like a rag, there is too much subtext to this for me to handle or analyze, I can only react emotionally. This is what happens while the pie is baking?

I need to read Paradise Lost, I guess.  Something to do with the war, I don’t have the context for this. But I want to understand this woman. Mr. Berry tells us more than we can even puzzle out through his words. He speaks of a generation of people.

I would really love to learn more about the themes, history and symbolism at play here, but for the moment it is beyond me. I want to know what the “lostness of Paradise” is. It is a “prime fact of her world,” Berry shows it to us, but it is lost on me. That hurts.

All I can do for now is enjoy the pie at the end like everyone else. Wow. Delicious beyond words.