Apples and Honey

This time of year, the autumn that announces the ever-changing nature of our lovely world, we Jews eat apples and honey to celebrate the sweetness of life, and to count our blessings from the year before while we look eagerly, with sticky chins and dripping fingers, to the one ahead.
Lasting as long as one could hope to hold them, the freshest memories have already become the past. Oh, how they taste so crisp, so freshly fallen from the branch.

Now, throwing the cores out the window on the ride home, digging into bags of apples and pears, looking for another taste of you, I cried. Cleansing tears of renewal, not crocodile tears or signs of weakness in character. Real hope is born in the admission and acceptance of raw emotion. Real strength comes from refusal to compromise or sweep aside what's meant to be felt. Trust me, a raging river in melting spring bursts forth with more power than the trickle that is left by autumn, just as a full range of emotions felt at once can resolve more than just one small portion of sorrow.

No matter that I should be sleeping, like my baby is. Don't even ask how long my back has been crunched into my lunchbox car, shuttling our bony bodies back and forth from one home base to the other. For some unbelievable, blessed reason (lord have mercy?!) I am awake, my fingers jabbing the keys like my Nana Mollie stabbing the air in her final delirium, thinking she was playing the penultimate game of mah-jong.

Whirlwind weekend come and gone. Much anticipated, a heady reunion has already slipped away, replete with blissful celebrations, contemplative run-on moments and days of run-on sentences. Laughing out loud, big belly laughs. Holding hands. Singing. Harvesting. Eating apples. Strolling the market in animated wonder after sitting in utter stillness. Drinking cider and beer and glasses of wine. Witnessing the exchanging of vows and donning party clothes to celebrate in mountain air. Unknowns, flecks of autumn's jewels, sparkled in our eyes. Electric moments charged between us as we did the things that folks do. Driving, riding, sighing with longing and the fullest satisfaction, both. Counting stars and waving at the moon. Smiling at plain old you. Just you and me, happily we be. As now has no place else to go.

The New Year has arrived. I've made another journey around the wheel. Though we're looking toward the fallow season, the frozen ground hardly closes itself. Under the blanket of white, silence falling from the sky, forces are gathered and work will get done. For now, the fall is rustling through the finest golden flames, the reddest torches and fans, the leaves and the tawny grasses all wait for a sign. Hushed in the undulating mountains, trees like paintbrushes stiffly rising forth in a proclaimation of the constant certainty of change, leaves rustled and blew along the side of the road the whole way back across America. As I drove, miles reeled behind me, littering promises that have yet to be uttered by the wind.

Would you care to share the mystery that unfolds within each new promise of our moments, connected to the last one, connecting us all the way from beginningless time? You wanted a shout out and here it is. Every pore of my being is saturated with the imprint of recent moments; I cherish each even as they drift quickly into the past tense. I tasted them, full on, as they arose from our boundless joy. Then, I let them go, like falling tears. Washing away the bittersweet remnants of the fading year, purifying my soul. Honey, you gave me bags of apples. Along with kindness, joy, and light. Open hearts can do no more. I responded, my own heart full, with one last leap at you, arms thrown wide to close around you. Held you, tight. Then I slammed shut the door of the car and drove away, heart pounding in my ears and the salty works streaming down.

But...don't worry. By the time this funny lass hit KOP she was already rocking the harmonica and singing at top volume. Moments come, then go. Memories linger long after the actions fade. Sadness (happiness too) ebbs and flows, unblocked, like falling mountain water. No manipulation can create the serpentine pathways that will carve their own course with time.

Perhaps, together once more, we'll eat apples and honey with sticky, beaming faces. Eyes locked in wonder at the sweetness I'm certain we can continue to find. Electricity crackling between us, jaws working at the sweetness, goofy grins that consume a whole face. My vision looks like this: mountains surround us, bubbling water and our own laughter serve as a useful language. Our bodies and souls hum one blissful, continuous song of union and love. We dip apples in honey and let the goo run down all the way to our elbows, licking it off in glee. Happy New Year, dear reader. Welcome to my inner universe. Join me for another unknown stretch of mystery. Hope you stick around for the apple blossoms to burst forth as the wheel continues to spin around. This is the stuff my dreams are made of.