This is the time of year when I used to go apple picking with my kids. Alas, they’ve all flown the nest, and the one day my daughter and I could have gone, I was simply in too much pain. I simply love everything about the County Line Orchard where we always go–the apples, the beekeeping shack, the petting zoo, the pumpkin patch, the “hayrides,” the bright red tractors…
But I stumbled across the apple poem below today, and I thought I’d share that as today’s post and a celebration of the bounty of the season. Come to think of it, I don’t need kids to go to the apple orchard, so perhaps I can make that happen next week! My physical therapist wants me out and about more anyway.
In the meantime, I think the top picture goes well with Ms. Essinger’s poem as these apples seem almost translucent to me, basking in the sun as they are. And her poem also reminds me of my own mother, who struggles with her memory these days, and whom I hope to visit in Germany this winter when hopefully I am fit to travel again.
I planted an apple tree in memory
of my mother, who is not gone,
but whose memory has become
so transparent that she remembers
slicing apples with her grandmother
(yellow apples; blue bowl) better than
the fruit that I hand her today. Still,
she polishes the surface with her thumb,
holds it to the light and says with no
hesitation, Oh, Yellow Transparent . . .
they’re so fragile, you can almost see
to the core. She no longer remembers how
to roll the crust, sweeten the sauce, but
her desire is clear—it is pie that she wants.
And so, I slice as close as I dare to the core—
to that little cathedral to memory—where
the seeds remember everything they need
to know to become yellow and transparent.
by Cathryn Essinger, as seen in American Life in Poetry, Column 639, June 19, 2017
I spotted these insane candy apples at a county fair a few years ago–exactly the kind of thing my kids would love! They’re “summer apples,” too, aren’t they? Just a different variety…
And then, of course, later in the fall, there’s the pumpkin patch, a whole other glory!