Apple pickin’
Fall in New England means school field trips to apple orchards. It’s unavoidable—not that I’d try to avoid it. I volunteered to “be one of the mommies” on Stella’s class trip today. I somehow managed to get lost (which upset one of my riders greatly — Stella kept telling him her mommy would be able to fix the situation, but he clearly had little faith), and forgot to bring lunch (the trip was 10:30 to 2 pm), but despite everything, I did learn a lot:
- When you cut an apple in half, you find a star. (“I knowed that,” said several of Stella’s classmates, perhaps a bit impatiently.)
- When you plant an apple seed, the tree that grows is a different variety of apple. (None of us knowed that. Not even the grownups.)
- Oranges are actually a berry. So are bananas.
Discussion ensued among the parents: Was Johnny Appleseed a complete fabrication? Which apples are best for crisp, which are best for pie? And anyway, how has your kid been transitioning to school? It still feels new to Stella, and to me, this big-kid day that she has now. I think about how new shoes at the beginning of the year leave blisters, but a month later they are as comfortable as being barefoot — you don’t even remember not having them.
On the way back to school every passenger dropped her bag of apples on the floor at some point. I tried to collect each apple and put it back in its original bag (the kids were in agreement about whose apple was whose, astonishingly) but I expect to find a lone apple in that car some months from now, wizened and half-frozen, and I will think back on this first full day of autumn, and maybe remember that bananas are berries, and hope that by then Stella’s school day feels as comfortable as being barefoot.
