A Haunting of Cherry Pie

A story of post-mortem parental pranking

Hey, Mom. You know that thing when…

you have a cherry tree and it fruits like a mofo for the first time and so your husband and kids are like “ooooh WE should make cherry pie!” And your husband says “I bet if you guys pick enough cherries, you can convince Mom to make one” and you agree because Pssh, the kids have shitty attention-spans just like you.

This is a safe Mom-promise with zero downside.

But then they go and pick a full on gallon bag ziplock of cherries and are all proud of themselves and you are proud of them too, but then they are like “here you go mom! Now you can make cherry pie!”

And you remember you don’t even like cherry pie but you are the dumb one who made the stupid ass promise and I guess we are fucking doing this.

So, you make the pie crust and wash the cherries that same day.

You do this with good intentions but then it is dinner and you also remember how much you hate “pitting” the cherries so you say “fuck it, I’ll do that tomorrow.”

And then you wake up and your kids are like “can we do the pie today?” And your husband is like “by the way I also bought cherries at Safeway last night because they were on sale, so we should really make that pie if we are actually going to make it.”

Even though it has literally not even been one whole fucking day since they were put in the fridge.

But it is a fair comment because he knows you, and he obviously has already seen that you’ve started down your procrastination road, and is letting you know in subtle way “if you don’t do it he will” and he knows you’d be irritated by that so he is warning you. So. Sure. Let’s make the pie today kids.

You reluctantly start pitting the cherries on your own

because your kids quickly decide it is too difficult for them (and to be honest you are fine with that because cherry-stained fingers all over the house seems like more work than pitting the cherries on your own) so you say yes to their suggestion when they ask if they can “entertain you while you pit cherries” by playing a video game.

And then your husband (who btw vetoed buying the cherry picker from Amazon that would have gotten there that morning because he “can just 3D print that” but did he? No.) goes to Home Depot and leaves you with the game-playing-children-who-need-a-snack.

So you do that, too.

Then your kids decide they want to restart their vide game they are playing because “we really want to show you the video game” because look! Look! The mom of the main character dies in this horrific unable to breathe and heart stopping way

“just like Gaga did!”

And so now you are rolling out pie crust, crying, and thinking about your Mom who died a month ago and how she used to make canned cherry pie because she hated making it from scratch after having worked in cherry picking factories as a kid and you wonder if she is literally up in heaven fucking with you and making your kids want pie and then your kids complain about being hungry again ALREADY and you no longer wonder about post-humous mom-meddling because obviously this is her doing.

So you grumble at them to get their own snack, because you are making them a dumbass pie that you don’t even want to eat (but you say it in a nice-mom way) and then they ask why the pie isn’t done yet and you keep your cool but then your husband comes home and he and the boys ask for lunch.

You ignore them under the guise of being in an important pie-phase.

Then you angrily put the pie in the oven, and go to set the time, only to realize it’s already 12:30pm and you spent all morning making pie.

You then become rage and head for your bedroom to pout and feel put-upon but throw out a “you can reheat the leftovers for lunch.”

Then you go into the bathroom to write out this story uninterrupted because you need to figure out why the fuck you just blew half of your Saturday making a goddamn cherry pie before you spend the rest of the afternoon picking the rest of the cherries that you apparently don’t need.

You know, that thing?

Yeah, I’m good without that, thanks. But thanks for stopping in to say hi. I can hear your laugh from here.