How do you feel about apples?

I have a lot of feelings about apples

An opportunity to talk about apples about the asterisks. Skip ahead as I’m about to get into some feeling sorting below.

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10:30am

Writing is the way I regulate my emotions and the way my body feels when it’s been sent into overwhelm. I’m not sure which of my various brain things is responsible for this full body nausea and tingling. If I was at home, I’d just cry, or journal, or call a friend. But today I’m by myself at the bookstore for the first time. I opened and counted the cash and turned on the lights and the music and I was settling in for a magical first day.

Then I had an interaction that rocked my whole world. It was an actual trigger. The kind that makes you feel the way you did when the bad thing was happening to you.

Normally I would do some opposite action and just send love and goodness into the world.

6:16pm

First day at the book shop on my own

My day may have started in a manner that threw off my whole limbic system but goodness y’all there is nothing a bookstore and being there all day, in my element, chatting with book lovers. Listening to parents reading to their kids. Sharing stories…

Once my kiddo was having a meltdown to extreme heat, and we thought he had heat stroke, and we brought him home to my friends and laid him down in her room. A room where two friendly cats were, and one cat they was never seen with human eyes. We left him in there and went to chat in the living room and half an hour later (he was 8, I think) he came out of the room and announced, with his handed lifted into the air, “I WAS CURED BY CATS!”

And he was. He told us that all three cats had come to sit with him and purred, even the cat who was never seen by people. My kiddo, he’s a cat whisperer. Cats love him, and he loves cats.

That story is one of my favourites to tell.

And today, I would like to say, I get it, on a profound level. Because today,

*raises* arms skyward*

“I WAS CURED BY BOOKS AND THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE THEM!”

Maybe not as catchy, and maybe this story won’t be a crowd favourite at family outings, but damn if seven hours working in that magical and spectacularly curated book shop didn’t woah down my physical, emotional and limbic overwhelm.

I feel better. Better than better. That this that triggered me, I am able to look at it from adjacent perspectives and see how I don’t have to let it get to me, or ruin my day, and I can let it go. I’m grateful to the past me who reacted with mostly kindness to the person who delivered the trigger, and than I didn’t react beyond what I think was expected in the situation. I didn’t let my previous trauma inform the rest of my today. I somehow managed to work seven hours.

I was able to self-regulate in a way that I could not have even seven years ago. When confronted with sort of situation in the past my brain would go straight to, “no one wants you here, and you need to die”. Brains are weird and sometimes they make big mistakes. I’m grateful that my brain, limbic system and I are on better terms these days. That the things that seemed like the end of the world no longer are. And that feels…extra amazing. Like in my life time extreme change and resolution are possible. That past trauma doesn’t have to keep creating a repeat of the situations I experienced before. That I’m healing.

I also credit a strong support structure, my partner, my co-parent, my kids, my long-time friends and the new folks in my current life who genuinely seem to appreciate me for the human I am so I don’t have to mask as much as I used to.

…and now I can write about apples.

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Whimsical prompt:

How do you feel about apples?

I have a lot of feelings about apples, actually, which is maybe why past me created this prompt. If you don’t have a ton of feelings about apples, that makes sense too.

I’m from up north in Manitoba, and our growing season is short, so the only apples we could grow were crab apples. They are tiny tart and just the right size for throwing at your brother if he was being annoying, and I loved them. They made the best jelly. THE BEST. (You can tell me what your favourite jelly is, and you’ll be just as right no matter what it is because I believe in simultaneous bests)

The store bought apples up north. GROSS. We’d get Red Delicious (mealy, spongy, styrofoam) and Golden Delicious (sweet, mealy, spongy, ugh) and Granny Smith (kinda like a giant crab apple) and I hated apples. You couldn’t get me to eat them. Not when there were wild blueberries, and a raspberry bramble in our yard. And in the winter I would eat the frozen berries we’d save from summer picking. Apples were bad.

Then. I moved to the west coast. I didn’t eat apples there. Cuz why when there were nectarines and peaches and plums and all sorts of amazing fruit. I worked at the Granville Market and after a life of dissatisfactory grocery store fruit…I was in fruit heaven. Why would I sink to apples.

I eventually moved back east past my home province to live in Ottawa, the national capital of Canada. I was going to school for communications and I got a job at the Byeard Fruit Market, a tiny specialty fruit shop in the larger Byward Market.

It was magic. But they had SO MANY APPLES.

A man came in during my shift (around 2005?) and he had a box. A box with a row of fancy apples. Honey Crisp, he said. They are a new varietal, never been in Canada before. He’d met a man on a plane who had given him a slice of one, and he’d bought a box right away and he was wondering if we’d carry them.

I took a slice of this apple.

And BOOM.

My life changed.

This was what apples tasted like?! Fresh, crispy, nuanced, floral, with sweetness and a tinge of honey.

I couldn’t believe it. I can’t remember what happened, if my bosses jumped aboard the early honey crisp train or what, but I…I gave apples another chance. I tried every single one in the store. And you know what. THEY ARE ALL DIFFERENT! I had a red delicious that made me realize why they are called that. I now understand why some apples are eating apples and some apples are pie apples. Their textures and flavours and shapes vary so widely. Now I love apples. With a passion. Every time I see a new one, I try it. My favourites are Punk Ladies, the Violette apple and the Idared. But my very favourite is still a tiny curmudgeonly crabapple picked right off the tree.

How do you feel about them apples? Do you have a favourite?

Heart,

Wake

(Thanks for reading. I appreciate you more than I can say.)