Yogurt Pie

It is as bad as it sounds. It was maybe in 1979 or 1980 in Knoxville, Tennessee.

My sister, Keely, who was eleven or twelve, contracted mono that summer. We think it was due to her swimming nonstop at Dean Hill Pool, where the UT football coaches got a break in membership dues. We always got a swimming pool membership with each of Dad’s football teams.

I remember in Ames, Iowa, Mom used to say, "We need to go eat up our minimum!" Our minimum was $15.00 a month at the Ames Golf and Country Club.

I shot my only birdie in golf at Dean Hill in Knoxville in the days that I was trying to be the next Nancy Lopez and played on the boys golf team at Knoxville Catholic. My dad wanted that for me - to be Nancy Lopez - my golf game truly interested him in a way nothing about me had before. And it wasn't personal - the only thing a football coach can really focus on is football and maybe his own golf game in the month of June before two-a-day starts.

Anyway, Keely was so sick and not hungry at all for anything, and it was strange to see her so unwell. She was an easy-going sunny kid who was always eager to play, and she didn't want to play anymore. She didn't even have the energy argue with Casey, who was a year older, and bossed her around.

Mom called them, "The Bickersons."

But that summer, Keely only liked drinking pineapple juice from a can, so Mom bought huge cans of pineapple juice from Winn Dixie.

It was also the first time any of us had been sick for longer than a few days. We children back then had no allergies, and we didn't need braces, and we could disappear for hours on end walking our giant black lab, Clancy, in the woods and nobody thought a thing about it.

We were feral children told to be back by dark. Clancy, our dog, was also our brother, who patiently wore ballet or football costumes, depending on who was dressing him up.

We fought a lot as kids - who gets to dress up Clancy? Whose turn is it to clean the kitchen?

Then Keely got mono, which meant we had to learn to be sympathetic.

What?

We weren't used to being sympathetic. We were told "toughen up!" But when one of us got sick, Mom was always gentle and kind - if we proved we had a fever.

Then crack open the ginger ale and saltine crackers and television on the couch. It was great! Andmaybe penicillin if it was strep, but we'd got a shot and as Mom recently said, "You kids would be back on the court by nightfall after the shot."

Anyway, yogurt pie that hot green summer in Knoxville.

Somehow, I found this recipe for a fresh summer dessert. It was so simple, and there would be no more swimming for Keely whose glands were swollen with mono. Maybe the recipe was in Ladies Home Journal. Maybe it was in Red Book? Maybe it was in McCalls? Those were all the magazines Mom read, and, maybe that is where I discovered a recipe for yogurt pie.

Here is the recipe. Two cups of flavored yogurt - blueberry, raspberry, strawberry - you choose. And then either a cup or two of Cool Whip. Mix it together into this kind of pink or purple lava and pour it into a graham cracker crust ready-baked pie shell.

Then chill for an hour if you want. (Sometimes we couldn't wait.) And voila! It was so good and so creamy and sweet and so easy that we made it everyday for Keely who lay pale and wan on the couch or in her bedroom. It was how we could be sympathetic.

"Make your sister yogurt pie and give her a glass of pineapple juice." It was a miracle.

And we all got to eat too. We ate it everyday. Day after day.

"Mom, we need to make yogurt pies! Go to Winn Dixie!"

And Mom would always get the ingredients because Keely had mono. Mom told us she was going to be sick for six to eight weeks. Unheard of!

But by the end of week two, Keely did not want anymore yogurt pie.

None of us did.

It was a short-lived enthusiastic attempt at a new recipe that we gorged ourselves on and then couldn't bear the sight of anymore. As for Keely and her mono? Mom says she willed herself to get better, and she was well in about three weeks.

But I remember her dark room in the early days of mono and the yogurt pies, and sometimes, I pretended Keely was Beth March, or maybe, Mary Ingalls, who goes blind in "Little House on the Prairie." And I was taking care of her giving her yogurt pie and pineapple juice and reading her THE SECRET GARDEN or A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN or LITTLE WOMEN.

None of us got sick that summer.

"Don't drink after your sister!"

We didn't but I even taught the boys how to make yogurt pie and we'd serve it to her in bed like she was a little princess, and it felt like we were doing good in the world - caring for the sick.