This morning I am with my folks. We crunched into cold, freshly cut gravenstein apples for our first part of breakfast. I watched them close their eyes for the first bite, and I could literally see childhood memories flowing out like an aura around them. We had a gravenstein tree in the first house I lived in, from 1956 to 1967. Now that I think of it, that was the first home they purchased with their growing family. They moved in with four children, ( I was 5 months old) and they moved out with Eight.
The apple tree bordered our alley, and was large, but not prolific for some reason. We waited all summer watching those apples form, not picking them green to toss them for sport as kids love to do. That tree has made it into a song my brother Tom wrote called "If You Don't Like the Rain, Go Back to California". It was our island when the backyard flooded during winter rains. It was the site of our Barbie gardens ( our Barbies liked to get dirty). It was the place a kid could climb up and hide when the world became too much.
While Mom ate her apple slices she began to talk, " I remember when I first saw an Apple in California that cost 10 cents. I was so shocked. When we were little we lived around orchards and had all the apples we could eat." I asked about when that time in California was, which took us on a little journey into her young adult life. I could feel the magic of the fruit bringing forth memories which were so strong, at times she had to stop and breath through a sob.
She told of being in San Fransisco after college, living at the YWCA, and then in a rooming house as she worked for the Veteran's Administration. Dad was finishing college at Santa Clara in San Jose, a year behind her in college at that point because of his time serving in WWII. The year was 1947. Mom chokes up when I ask her how she decided to stay in the Bay Area, even though her hometown was Portland. She wanted to be near my Dad, and they would walk the streets of the city on weekends, dreaming of the life they would have after they were married.
Mom's mind shifted to a girlfriend she had who was a co-worker. .....had just gone to a fashion show and saw a gorgeous wedding gown, she told mom she had to see it. It had been the finale of the show, with matching bridesmaid's dresses too. Mom and her friend went to the store together where it was being sold. It cost the huge sum of 138.00. That was the fabulous dress she ended up wearing, and it lies preserved in a cedar chest now. She spoke of wanting to write a note with the dress history and leave with it with the dress in the box. She has been doing this these days, leaving notes on her projects, in 'case'.
Three of her daughter's wore that dress, feeling like princesses. Not every marriage lasted, but wearing the dress was a great thing all by itself. Slipper satin is what the cleaners told me it was made of. I hand repaired the cream colored lace around the sleeves and the bodice, feeling the history in my hands. Kate Middleton's dress resembled it very much, yet Mom's dress is far more elegant. I'm sure you would agree if you saw the two side by side.:)
We went from the taste of old fashioned apples, ones which are rarely grown these days because they don't keep, to a string of memories of my Mom's life when she was in the prime of her youth. I could see her eyes brighten while she recounted the various jobs she had, and all of this before I even existed. The wedding dress was the precursor to my being ushered into the world. Inconceivable, really, to think of how it all happens. How people fall in love, and then make children and then grow old, and watch their grandchildren begin the whole dance again.
I shall make applesauce, and fill their house with the smell of cooking apples. We will eat our memories, breath them in, laugh about the past, and catch a little sob here and there too.
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