An Apple a Day

Its a blustery autumn afternoon and my family is huddling together in the back of a hay wagon. A sputtering old John Deere is towing us through the apple grove after an exhausting day of plucking the red, green and yellow fruits from low hanging limbs. Eric leans his head of my shoulder and softly hums “On Top of Spaghetti.” Beth perches on my lap proudly clutching her treasure – a shiny red Jonagold that she pulled from the tree all by herself. Ken balances Emily on one knee and a sack full of Golden Delicious on the other. They say an apple a day keeps the doctor away. By the size of the bag, our family should be healthy for weeks to come.

Each year Ken and I take the family on an autumn quest to pick apples. We drive fifty miles north west to a small family owned farm in the country. Eric and Emily chatter with glee. “Are we there yet?! Are we there yet?!” Beth babbles along just because. The trip has become one of their favorite traditions and they can hardly contain themselves.

When I grew up, we didn’t pick apples in autumn. But we did pick wild blueberries in summer. I remember one time when Dad and Mom loaded us into the car and we bumped up a mountain trail to the summit. After Theresa, Tina and I tumbled out of the car, Mom passed out shiny silver pails and we set off on a hike that would take us a bit deeper into the woods.

Our perch from the top of the mountain provided a panoramic view of the tiny coal mining villages below. We saw red and brown cars puttering through the towns along cracked gray streets. Tiny houses were clustered here and there, dotting the landscape. If we were lucky, Mom said, we might spy a hawk circling overhead. I don’t remember any hawks but I do remember rabbits and squirrels and hoof prints from a deer that had passed through before we arrived. At one point, Dad cornered a small striped garden snake and coaxed us over to see it. Theresa crouched down to examine it as it slithered into the weeds. But Tina and I shrieked and ran away. Dad laughed before rejoining the trek.

Finally, we arrived at the rows of squat bushes freckled with plump, ripe blueberries. “Don’t eat too many”, Mom chided. But before the day ended our finger tips, lips, cheeks and tongues were stained purple. Pails overflowing we started lugging ourselves back to the car with sore bellies and tired feet. We crawled into the back seat and cuddled up like a pile of puppies. And before Dad turned the key in the ignition we had drifted off to sleep. The next day, Nana transformed the berries into sweet pies, jellies and jams. We feasted on treats for weeks to come and talked about our adventure for months.

Back in the hay wagon, Emily’s eyes are starting to droop. Eric is yawning and Beth appears ready to drift off to sleep. Tomorrow we will clean our apples. Some will be chopped and baked in a pie. Some will be sent to school to sit on the teacher’s desk. Others will be bitten and chewed for an afternoon snack. As Emily, Beth and Eric enjoy the fruit of their labor, they’ll talk animatedly about the apple farm and all the fun we had together. Then, after our bellies are full and we are crawling into our beds, I’ll tell them about the time I went picking blueberries in the mountains when I was a little girl.