The Pierogi We Pinched With Grandma

Grandma had six children, and her grandchildren who came out female outnumbered the boys two to one, which she has said more than once was the Lord’s idea of a joke.

We are scattered. Lisa lives in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Jolynn and Jess are in Maryland, outside Frederick. Rose is in Dayton, Ohio, not far from me. Nicole, Heather, Erin, Michelle and Beth are all within an hour of the farm. Kim and Mavis are one county over, and Emily teaches third grade in Wilkes-Barre.

And Sophie, the baby of us all, is nineteen and a sophomore at Penn State, and the only one who still calls Grandma every Sunday night without being asked.

I sat a while with my thumbs over the glass. Then I typed: Grandma needs us Saturday the 12th. Early. Bring a rolling pin if you have one. I hit send before I could think better of it.

I did not expect an answer at midnight. But Sophie replied in eleven seconds. I counted.

Which pierogi? she wrote. All of them?

All four hundred, I wrote.

Is she okay?

I stared at that one for a long time. I did not know the answer, and that was when something began to sit wrong in my stomach.

She’s okay, I wrote. She just needs us.

I’m there, Sophie wrote. Then, a minute later: I’m bringing my own flour sack towels.

By breakfast, all thirteen had answered. Thirteen yeses. Lisa said she would drive in Friday night with two coolers. Jolynn said she would bring her husband’s big folding table.

Jess asked what she was supposed to do if she had never made a pierogi in her life, and Kim told her to hush, there was a job for everybody.

Nobody asked why. Not one cousin asked what Aunt Pam had done. They only asked what time.

I will admit something here that does not make me look good. I had not been to see Grandma since Easter. Almost none of us had. We sent cards and photographs of the babies. We called on Sundays, some of us, when we remembered.

And a woman who lives a hundred yards from that farmhouse had been going over every morning and every night for years. I did not think of it that way on the first night. I thought of it that way on the second.

I drove home to Columbus on Sunday with the radio off. Pam had brought over a casserole that morning, and I had thanked her. She asked whether I was staying through the week, and I told her no, I had patients Monday.

She said that was a shame, and she looked tired when she said it. I felt a stab of guilt, and I pushed it down.

The two weeks that followed went by in a blur of work and the group chat. Lisa made a spreadsheet, because Lisa makes a spreadsheet for everything. Fourteen names, fourteen jobs: rolling, cutting, filling, pinching, boiling, buttering, packing, two on dishes, one on the radio.