Go for Joy

It’s Sunday afternoon and we’re rushing back to the city. We have dinner plans and are pushing to get there on time. We’ve been asked to bring dessert—something our hosts understandably expect to be delicious, given that Julian is a gourmet chef and all. But in anticipation of our quick turn-around time, he has asked Izzy, our 19-year-old, to prepare it—a cherry pie to be precise.

We arrive home, rushing up the stairs and seeing the pie tin sitting there on the kitchen counter, covered with a cloth.

“She made it!” I delight. “That’s so lovely.” What a responsible, generous daughter we have.

We peel back the tinfoil in our moment of pride, excited to witness Izzy’s creation. Revealed, however, is a sad, sunken pie, looking up at us with cherries that seem like they’re crying.

“Oh!” I blurt.

“Oh!” echoes Julian.

“What is it?” I inquire. “What did you ask her to make?” I whisper.

“Well,” Julian gathers his words, “it’s supposed to be a cherry pie.”

“What happened to it?” I ask, staring at it. The cherries are positioned unevenly and there’s no lattice work on top.

“I don’t know,” he says, “but it’s too late to make anything else. We really need to leave now.”

And we do need to leave. This is a fancy dinner. Arriving late—something I struggle with often—is just not an option.

“We’ll get some ice cream on the way,” Julian suggests. “We can put it on the pie to cover it up.”

“OK,” I say, not convinced.

It’s hot and stressful. We pick up the ice cream at the corner store and we’re sweating by the time we arrive.

The front door opens and I over-excitedly say, “Hi!” For a moment I feel like a teen hiding something from my parents. This is awkward. The pie is appropriately covered—hidden in tin foil—and the hosts receive it with enthusiasm, unaware of what they’re carrying.

As we shift into the evening and the wonderful company, Julian and I forget about the secret, sad pie. It’s summer and we’re enjoying ourselves with new friends. But it all rushes back when it’s time for dessert and the covered pie suddenly emerges on the patio. Eager faces await its reveal. Julian and I subtly exchange an anxious look.

The tinfoil is peeled back, and then we see it: The excited faces with bright open eyes start to sink, just like the seemingly messy-looking pie before them.

It’s a moment, a glimpse, and the sunkenness is quickly replaced with politeness to cover the reaction.

Julian and I jump in with damage control. “We were out so our daughter, who loves to bake, made this recipe for the first time,” says Julian, coming to Izzy’s (and our) defense.

“Yes,“ I follow. “We’re so grateful she took the time."

“Wonderful!” everyone chimes in, as the pie is slowly sliced with a knife full of uncertainty.

Plated before us, I smile sickly-sweet as I put the forkful of droopy desolation in my mouth.

Whoa! What is this? It’s tart and sweet and doughy—all at the same time. Could it be? No, it couldn’t. It really couldn’t. It’s delicious!

The relief at the first bite permeates the night air. All of our faces look more open—happy, even joyful, in anticipation of a second bite. We start to chuckle, a contagious feeling that rises until we all find ourselves laughing out loud.

“This is amazing!” our hosts share. “Tell Izzy thank you from us.”

They’re not just being generous. It truly is scrumptious—even more so with the surprise.

Julian reminded me of this story in a recent conversation we had about joy.

“What’s a recipe that invites joy?” I ask.

It doesn’t take him long to respond: “Cherry pie! Remember when Izzy made it for that dinner?”

Joy can be elusive. It’s something we long to experience in our lives, but it can be difficult to get to, sometimes even feeling impossible.

We might feel guilty about wanting joy in our lives, believing our role is to give to others and thinking we don’t deserve the joy of the gifts that come our way.

Perhaps we stay in a relationship much longer than is healthy to do so. We think this is as good as it gets, that we won’t find something better. In staying, we rob ourselves of the chance to explore what else is waiting for us. What might we attract when we’re in a positive space?

And what about friendships? Frenemies are that toxic combination of friend and enemy. Someone who always seems to be around, but who we know for a fact will never have our back. Someone who’s part of the friend group but, at our core, we recognize will never truly support us as a good friend would.

Perhaps acknowledging the limitations of joy in our lives is a starting point as we move toward it. It’s like identifying the jumbled sad pie before it’s transformed into a delectable treat.

How can we give ourselves permission finally to let go of old dynamics, and the relationships they embody, so that we have the emotional space to let joy in—a process not unlike the lightness of a pie crust that gently flakes off as you eat it. And how can we be less hard on ourselves—giving ourselves a break when things converge at an overwhelming crossroads? Can we say, “We did the best we could. We tried and here’s the outcome” and let it go? Julian and I were only able to do this after the first taste of the pie. In moving toward joy, we could’ve incorporated this approach much earlier, letting it go as we made our way to dinner.

In this post, I’m inviting us to go for joy. Making cherry pie can help us get there. Here’s a recipe from our book Eating Together, Being Together (Clauss-Ehlers & Clauss-Ehlers, 2022):

Very Cherry Pie

Ingredients

Crust

4 tbsp unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/4 cup soft brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 cup old-fashioned rolled oats

3/4 cup whole wheat flour

1/4 tsp fine sea salt

Filling

3 cups fresh cherries, stems removed and pitted

1/4 cup maple syrup

1/4 cup turbinado sugar

zest of 1/2 orange

3 Tbsp cornstarch

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Serves 6.

To make the crust:

Preheat the oven to 425°F.

In a large bowl, vigorously mix the butter, brown sugar, and vanilla with a rubber spatula until very soft and smooth. Add the oats, whole wheat flour, salt, and 3 tbsp of water, and mix by hand until everything comes together. Do not overmix, as the dough will become hard when cooked.

Wrap your dough and refrigerate for an hour. On a floured surface, use a rolling pin to roll out three-quarters of the dough into a large circle that’s about 2 1/2 inches larger than your 10-inch pie pan. Carefully lay your dough in the pan, gently pushing down the sides and corners. With a sharp knife remove any dough hanging over the edge of the pie pan.

Roll out the remaining dough into a rough rectangle that measures about 4 X 9 inches. Use a pizza wheel cutter to cut the dough into 8 long strips. Set aside the crust and strips of dough.

To make the filling:

Place each cherry in the open-ended cup of an olive/cherry pitter tool and push down on the tool. The cherry will stay in the cup and the pit will be ejected. Discard the pits and place the pitted cherries in a medium bowl. Once all the cherries are pitted, add the maple syrup, turbinado sugar, orange zest, cornstarch, and cinnamon and gently toss to coat the cherries. Pour the cherry mixture into the dough-lined pie pan. Lay 4 strips of dough evenly on top of your pie filling, then lay the other 4 strips of dough evenly in the opposite direction. Trim the overhanging dough. You should now have a lattice design on top of your cherry pie.

Bake your pie for 15 minutes, then lower the oven temperature to 350°F and bake for 20 more minutes, or until the crust is golden brown. Remove your pie from the oven and let cool slightly before cutting it into wedges.

To make this an even bigger treat, serve your pie with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream or fresh Greek yogurt.

Joyful!

Concluding Activity: Go for Joy

We can be intentional about having joy in our lives. Part of this can involve letting go of things that don’t work for us, things that we feel we need to hold onto but that, in fact, end up holding on to us, keeping us stuck in place. Consider the following activities for all ages.

Young Helpers (toddlerhood through school-age children): Share Your Laughter

It’s so fun to make things like a pie and see how they turn out. Does it look messy or pretty? Maybe a mixture of both? Share your laughter about the outcomes of your creations.

Preteen and Teen Helpers: Stop Mixing!

Once you have mixed your butter, brown sugar, vanilla, oats, flour, and water together, it’s really important to stop mixing. If you keep mixing, you risk making your dough hard when it’s cooked. Sometimes in life we feel we need to keep trying, to keep mixing so to speak, thinking that it will make things better. But sometimes it makes things worse, as in the case of our Very Cherry Pie. Perhaps it’s important to know when to let things go so that we can move toward joy in other parts of our lives.

Grown-Up Helpers: Don’t Try So Hard

Sometimes we try and try and try again—to be friends with that one cool person, to apply for that cool job, to make a relationship work. It seems like no matter what we do, or how much we try, it just doesn’t work. Maybe in these moments, as hard as it might be, we need to step back and stop trying so hard. What might come when we decide to stop being friends with someone who ignores us? Is there suddenly space to seek out more caring relationships? Move toward joy by shedding efforts that don’t work and allowing room for those that do.