After Apple Picking

So many, many rainy mornings and sunny afternoons, that window was my gateway to the field of apple trees across the country road. Like sentries guarding the stories that I taught, the seasons’ leaves budded and fell with Odysseus and Romeo and Huck Finn. I would stare out that window, poised at the podium while students scribbled and fretted, made connections and language. And in my million and one moments, I never once thought of you. I dreamed and pondered, but never once believed that you would be here, a wiry boy of five, clutching your sweating dirt-stained palm to mine.

And now we stand like sentries, action figures hiding from the bad guys in the apple orchard. And now I am on the other side of the window and the other side of the world, it seems. Perspective is a funny thing. You are what I didn’t know to wish for in those dark mornings when the mist rose over the apple trees or those warmest of afternoons when I could hear the shouts of children field-tripping among the apple rows.

And now it is you and I who run through these fields, reaching past our grasp to where the juiciest apples remain unpicked. Your brother and sister join in our game, but it is you that understands the beauty of the fall fields, the miracle of crisp air and worms in green apples and the sting of cider up our noses from the piles of rotting fruit at our feet.

It is you that pulls me back to my grandmother’s yard, so many years ago when I was a girl of your age. Sprawled not in an orchard, but under the one giant apple tree by the bay, I would flatten myself against the earth so the wind would not find me. The October sun beat sparingly, so busy playing peek-a-boo with the clouds. And as I lay, I watched my dad climb the ladder to reach the ripest harvest.

Now you are the sweet son playing peek-a-boo between Rome and Macintosh. And you are the window through which I can see the girl who used to be and the parent I miss so much. And you my son, the apple of my eye, reflect the lessons I sometimes forget: beating the bad guys, searching for honor and apples without worms, and breathing deeply on a sun-kissed fall day.