On Story, Connection & Pie
What is heard? What is seen? What is felt? In what do we experience all three?
Last night, I baked a raspberry pie. As I rolled out the dough and then thoughtfully placed the lattice top, I thought so deeply about my mother and my grandmother, the family pie makers.
I live far from where I grew up. A continent and an ocean divides me from my mother. My grandmother now dwells in another realm as she passed over 14 years ago. But the pie, this act of baking, making, creating - it is a part of their story, especially the story that I carry of them. When I bake, it is as though we are all together again, bound by butter, flour, salt, water, sugar and fruit.
Who are we but the stories we can tell? I can’t remember who said that, but it is a thought that I carry with me. The importance of the story we tell as a collective culture, as a community, as humanity. There, of course, is no singular story. But in story, there is power - power that can conjure joy, tears, memories or outright chaos. One of my favorite journalists, Krista Tippett (OnBeing), speaks of these stories as the generative narrative of our time.
Today, I was thinking about the story or stories that have dominated in the past 100 years and how the same stories are playing out again in a similar fashion. These stories are entering a new chapter and I wonder if human societies will ever learn from the past. Living in Berlin, I walk the history of WWII. It is there on the name placards of those who died in concentration camps, it’s in the empty lots where buildings once stood, it’s in the restoration and construction projects that are still trying to rebuild what was lost.
I don’t know how our current stories will play out - there are of course a multitude of possibilities for an ending. Some of us are more familiar with the endings that occurred in the 20th century, but in other stories, such as the story of our climate in crisis, the ending can still be changed.
Crazy the thoughts that come while baking a pie…
Some narratives don’t need to be changed. The story of my grandmother baking each of her five children a pie every Saturday well into her eighties tells so much of her love and care of her children and how she could still show this to them even as they were adults.
The larger picture, the stories of our collective existence and relationship are those that need a complete rewrite. How to write and create a new narrative of our time? A dear friend once said to me, ‘I’m more interested in finding solutions than I am in continuously lamenting the problems of the world.’ She is, in fact, a solution finder and thankfully has created a business helping thousands of new parents.
I find sanctuary in the questions and in the truth that working together to find solutions is much more important than being the one who is right.
An old lesson shared by the young author, sailor, and marine biologist, Hannah Stowe reads:
Winds blow from,
Tides flow to.
There really aren’t many things that are certain. Whether it is a pie or the banks of a river - what heightens your memory and brings up stories?
Are stories the building blocks of our being?
I am curious to know your thoughts. Until then, I’ll be enjoying raspberry pie while seeking a deeper understanding of this life that we are living together on our dear planet earth, the only home that we’ve ever known.*
With love, questions & songs,
Kendy
A song from my 2017 album, The Knowledge of the North Woods. A song I wrote to honor my great-grandmother, Agnes Roberts Dittmar, a Scottish immigrant, poet and mother to my grandmother who baked incredible pies.
*The saying, ‘The only home we’ve ever known’ comes from the wonderful publication, Fix the News.
Thank you for reading my newsletter, one that will become more active in the coming months as I dedicate more time to my writing and music. I am so happy that you are on this journey with me, throughout long periods of silence. It is my aim to make you smile, open your heart and begin to ask many questions. If you enjoy my work, I would be very honored if you would share this newsletter and my music to those who would also enjoy.