Apples to Apples
Almost perfect, our apple was. I inspected it every day, cradling it in my hand, checking it for any sign of blemish or blight or scab. These had felled the other apples on the tree, stunting their growth or leaving them shriveled and gray. Not this apple. It ripened to a size shapely enough to entice Snow White, with a lovely green-gold color burnished rose on the side facing the west, where the sun blazes fiercely for hours before it sets.
I planned on picking my apple on Rosh Hashanah, a holiday in which apples take center stage, paired with honey to remind us that life is sweet.
But then my apple developed a spot. On the surface it was barely noticeable, a shallow dimple, but I feared that it signaled deeper problems within. Who knew how bad? Had it reached the core?
So the day before Rosh Hashanah I asked Michaela if she wanted the honor of picking our lone apple. She did. She picked it, rubbed it against her shorts to give it a shine, and handed it over. I brought it to my parents' house the next evening, where I sliced it and discovered that we'd picked it just in time, that yes, the flesh had begun to rot, and I cut that part out, and we ate the rest, and it was too tart because it wasn't ripe.
All that concern, all that hyper-awareness, and still nature foiled me, it felt like nature was trying to tell me something so cliched and obvious that I can't even bring myself to type it, but then again maybe that's because the lesson isn't really something you can put into words, it's just something you learn over and over, that death is part of life and life will take its course, that you can't control everything or even anything, that human nature like nature itself is riddled with unseen and unknown cankers that we often can't detect until they're staring us in the face.
Some more apple-related content, from my comic diary:
Three (plus a few more) Things That Kept Me Going This Week
- My dear aunt Anna gave us a copy of the first Olivia book when Michaela was born and damn if that wasn't one of the most accurate depictions of a kid that I've ever read. (I especially love the pictures of Olivia "moving the cat" since this is something Michaela now does to Rosie regularly.) This interview with his niece who remembers him affectionately is so sweet. It is part of a larger story on the 25 greatest picture books of the past 25 years, which includes several I have never heard of but which seem urgently necessary to read right now, like Each Kindness—I'm going to remedy that as soon as possible.
Dan Kois
- David Byrne's new album, Who Is The Sky?, has one really good song, "Everybody Laughs," and the rest are kind of OK (I played it for Chad in the car and he gamely listened to a couple of songs before he started squirming). But it inspired me to review Byrne's canon and I discovered Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, a 2008 album which Byrne made with long-time collaborator Brian Eno, and it feels somehow perfect for this moment. I've been playing it on repeat pretty much all week.
- I'm still plugging away at a 500-page biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder but I took a break to read Annie Ernaux's A Woman's Story. I hadn't read Ernaux before; I'm now eager to read the rest of her books. This portrait of her late mother is so deft. Not only does she succeed at portraying what life must have been like for her mother, who grew up in rural France in the early twentieth century, but it also captures the jolt of shifting from the conservative war years to the liberated 1960s. Even a parenthetical aside carries so much weight, like this one: “in Norman French, 'ambition' refers to the trauma of separation; a dog, for instance, can die of ambition.”
- Thanks are due again to Anna! This time for bringing this review of a newly reissued book by Ithell Colquhoun to my attention. I love that witchy women artists are getting so much attention right now. The writer attributes this to "the Hilma af Klint effect: an upsurge of popular interest in the conjunction of women’s art and spirituality triggered by the Guggenheim’s blockbuster exhibition." Maybe so, but I wonder if there isn't something else that is inspiring the reemergence of these forgotten voices. Or is this just what happens when the old gatekeepers move on and different people get to have a say in who gets the spotlight?
I did not write last week and thus have so many other things to post about, but so little time! Hopefully I can get back to the weekly routine soon. Meanwhile, I am wishing you a very sweet new year with just a teensy bit of tartness to counteract all that sweetness.
Love,
Claire