I've Got Pie!

    In an early scene of the movie The Way We Were, Barbra Streisand's character, Kate is a couple of years out of college and sees a former classmate across the bar. It is Hubble, the Golden Boy nemesis of sorts, played by Robert Redford. Hubble is in uniform as it is the midst of World War II, and the combination of alcohol and fatigue has him asleep at the bar.

Kate takes Hubble home with her, puts him to bed, and has relations with him. The next morning Kate goes out for groceries, Hubble wakes up – has no clue about where he is or how he got there, but he gets dressed and leaves. I don't know how their paths manage to not cross, but Kate arrives home, sees her prize from the night before is gone, runs to the window and sees Hubble on the sidewalk below walking away.

      In a panic, Kate opens the window, leans out and hollers, “Hubble! You can't leave! I've got pie!”

      That's my favorite quote from all moviedom!

      I've got pie!

      I identify so strongly with that quote. I am not Kate – she is ten times the woman I could ever hope to be. But I guess the things that are wrong with Kate – her insecurities and complexes – are totally me. And I see both Kate and me leaning out the window as an act of final desperation – if I can bribe you with pie, maybe in the time it takes you to share pie with me you will realize how wonderful I am, and you might stay!

      If you google The Way We Were quotes, I've got pie does not appear on the list. Only my list, I guess. But Hubble's response to I've got pie does make the list. Do you know what he says when Kate hollers out the window to him that she has pie?

      “What kind of pie?”

      And Hubble has pie, and they begin a relationship.

      When I was a few years out of college and working at a lab in Buffalo, one of my boss's collaborators taught graduate classes. At the beginning of one semester, the teacher suggested that I take his class, and so I did. While in the class, I took notice of a particular grad student who was also there. And then I took more notice of him.

      One day after class I asked the graduate student if I could borrow his notes from that day. And the next day, when I returned the notes and said “thank you,” I also said, “you deserve a cookie.” (Can you just picture me here hanging out of my figurative window and yelling after he has taken the notes and turned away, “Wait! I have cookies!”?)

      The grad student asked, “What kind of cookies?” and he said his favorite are chocolate chip.

      Instead of handing him the batch of peanut-butter cookies I had baked the night before and was totally prepared to give him at that moment, I went home and made a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies and gave him those the day after that.

      We got married seven months later.

      Kate's pie and her specialness, and my cookies and my wonderfulness were enough to bring relationships together. But they weren't quite enough to make them last forever. Alas the movie and the real life saw the unions dissolve. But good things came from that which had been –things that blossomed and flourished and still survive - in my case – two precious daughters.

      And I guess that's why when we, you, me, all of us - look back on all that was and all that might have been, it doesn't really hurt, and it is not so sad – we just smile and have fond memories – of the way we were.

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