Apple Memories

I love unsweetened applesauce!

I’ll eat it with practically anything. So this time of year, once or twice I pull out the slow cooker and make me up a batch. My second batch is cooking as I write this.

This morning, I looked at one funny-looking apple with a short, tight stem, and remembered for the first time in forever how I never ate an apple with a stem without reciting the alphabet.

You all know how that goes… the letter it pops out on is the initial of the last name of the man you’re going to marry.

B was Alan B., whom I held a place for long after our 3rd grade romance. That was a tough one … I had to make the first turn very hard.

Alan did always respond best to a direct approach, as long as it wasn’t too direct!

• 

Later it was K for Nicky K. It was a long shot, one had to handle him it gently, with as little pressure as possible. I wasn’t good at that. Even 50 years later at our class reunion, I found a way to push him out of his comfort zone!

I never did make it to W, so Bobby W. wouldn’t last, I knew. F was my favorite, because marrying Jesse F., if he would only wait, was something I longed for when I was 11. He didn’t. Just as well…

At the summer camp I went to for 6 years, I knew where every crabapple tree was. I could pick the best ones, peel the holes out with a fingernail to make sure it wasn’t a wormhole. I always picked one for my best friend too.

I have many memories of my grandmother. Not all of them are happy – she wasn’t always happy – but she taught me how to make an apple pie from scratch, and she didn’t leave out any secrets. I can still mix flour and butter together the way she taught me … with my fingers … for the lightest crust. We had a good time!

Now, my mother sang really weird bedtime songs to me — one of them was about a boy named Mikey who climbed an apple tree he shouldn’t have.

She couldn’t remember the words and would make some up, which annoyed me, I remember. But the moral of the story wasn’t lost on me when Mikey fell down … apples and all!!

How about you? Did you twirl apple stems? What role did apples play in your childhood? Do you pick apples?