*Originally posted January 5, 2020

When I was little, my brother and I spent a lot of time outside. There really wasn’t much else to do. We’d explore our neighborhood with other kids. Sometimes dad would take us for a ride out “in the country” and let us burn off all our energy running around like uncivilized wildlings. Like most kids, we got muddy, we got grass-stained, we got wet jumping into creeks, we put stuff in our mouths, and we got in trouble. We ate honeysuckle and crab apples and dandelions. If you’ve never had a crab apple, or a wild apple, they’re hard and very tart and not sweet like the hybrid apples available in the stores now. However, they are where apples originate; they’re apples 1.0.

We would find crab apples growing and we’d ask dad if we could eat them. He’d say that we could but that we probably didn’t really want to, so of course we did. That first bite would pucker your whole face up and yet you’d take another and another… too many bites would leave you with a tummy ache and dad saying, “Your tummy hurt? I told you”. This happened over and over again during our childhood. The tart, the hardness, the upset stomach, relived over and over again. This was not unlike our childhood in general. Things were hard more often than not. Dad was out of work a lot. We went without, we learned to make due. We became accustomed to crab apples. After a while the tartness was familiar; we got used to hard times.

Just like with the apples, from the tart came the sweet. We grew. We developed and changed. We learned. We made massive mistakes and had to pick ourselves up and start over (some of us more than the other). As a young person, I had a difficult time when I became pregnant with the love of my life, my only child, my daughter. I was unmarried and on my own until I met her father whom I wed and he then adopted her as his own. Later I married for a second time; that marriage ended two years ago as well. With a lot of soul searching I’ve come to accept my part in these two failed unions. Because he loves me, my brother has always teased me about my love life… what’s your last name again? Cornwhitson? I laugh along. Mama taught me that we can laugh or we can cry and I’m through crying.

In one particular conversation I was having with my mom via text, she was happily saying how proud she was of both her children. My brother has steadily climbed the ladder at his job, and worked very hard to be where he is. Mom was bragging about her son. Then she gets to me. She (Babcia) says, “And from your love affairs we have the wonderful Lindy”. I choked immediately upon reading this, and I laughed out loud. She may as well have said, “Oh your brother has been so successful in his career and you had a baby”. I know what she meant, but she always has a way to put things that will catch you off guard and you can’t help but laugh. Of course after I told my brother he was kind enough to congratulate me on my many love affairs, and I told him that maybe I should’ve been under his “watchful eye” as the newspaper called it (which apparently is his left eye). I have to laugh at my own mistakes. I’ve cried over them long enough and at 50 I’ve accepted who I am- the bad, the good, and all that’s in between. At the end of mom’s text she said to me, “So how you like THEM sweet apples?”

I thought about crab apples and hard times. I thought about the process of getting from there to here. I’d eat crab apples all over again if it got me where I find myself now. And I decided that I like them sweet apples just fine.