The Jennifer Blogs

I'm really enjoying this book I'm reading - A Girl Named Zippy. It's a memoir from a person you don't know. A person I don't know. Still, I'm enjoying her stories. She paints very vivid pictures, and makes me recall my own life growing up in Small Town, NY. (No, it's not really called "Small Town.")



I remember our kitchen smelling like apples. My mom used to look forward to the fall because that's when she would go to Roger Marris' apple orchard and ask if she could pick apples. She worked a regular job as a Lab Technologist at the hospital, but there was something about picking stuff that my mom loved. She would pick whatever was in season, and she loved it. Not for the money, mind you. She just loved pickin' stuff. And I do believe apple season was her favorite. (Is it offensive to anyone that I believe my mom should have been born Mexican?)



One of the perks of picking apples is that at the end of the day, before she came down from the ladder one last time, Mom would fill her basket with apples to bring home. I learned at a young age how to tell the difference between Red Delicious and Empire and Golden Delicious and Granny Smith. I knew what all the apples were called, and I knew what they all tasted like. And I loved the way they made our kitchen smell!



Now in Tokyo I look out the windows and I see the leaves turning gold and red and orange, and I watch them fall off the trees. If I open the door and feel the cold air, I can sometimes in my memory also smell those apples.