Love, Mama: Apple Pie

10/23/2025

Dear Mama,

Today, I was driving the kids home from school. It’s a long drive home, and I was reminded of our drives home from school back when I was a teenager.

You put me in that awful private school that was only open for 2 days a week and we had to drive an hour one way to get there—remember? And I was so happy, because even though it was awful, it wasn’t anywhere near as awful as the public school you pulled me out of. I hated that even more, and I was so grateful you took the time to drive me to that private school 2 days a week, just to be in a classroom with 12 other kids of all ages, doing basic-ass work.

And I’m grateful you figured out how to pay for it, because it wasn’t fucking free.

And it still sucked.

And I’m still grateful.

But you know what didn’t suck? Our rides back and forth to school. While we sat in traffic, we listened to music and SANG together and laughed at the silly lyrics and enjoyed each other’s company.

Remember that New Edition Oldies album we played out? Every day, we would put that tape into the deck and sing our hearts out to Earth Angel, and Blue Moon, and Tears on my Pillow. By the end of the school year, we BOTH knew every lyric to every song by heart, and when one of the songs would come on the radio, we would look each other in the eye and BUST OUT SINGING ALONG!!!

It was one of their most obscure albums, I think, because they were 80s pop idols covering music from the 50s, but it was so much fun learning those songs with you. They were your childhood memories, so I saw how happy you were singing them. You came alive.

And then we would get to that one spot on the freeway that signaled we were close to the school—remember? The spot with the goat that lived in a doghouse with a red curtain covering the front “door” to keep the wind out?

That goat was loved cause he was out there frolicking every time we sailed past. But it was weird as fuck.

Why was he in a doghouse?

We’d get off the freeway, stop singing, park and head on into the school, which was really an old church.

Good times.

I was thinking of those good times today as I drove my own kids, who are now BOTH teenagers, home from school—which they attend two days a week.

Sidenote: How do we so perfectly recreate our own childhoods without even thinking about it when we INTEND to create a whole new experience for our own kids? How in the hell did I end up homeschooling my kids and finding an in-person program for them 2 days a week that takes almost an hour to drive them to…just like how I grew up?

HOW?

Okay, sidenote over. I was thinking about the synchronicities between my childhood and my kids’ childhood while I sat in traffic on I-95, and remembering all you did for me, and looking at the fall leaves and feeling the cool air flowing in through the windows and then all of a sudden, I was back in those memories of vivid New England Autumns, where the trees were the color of blood and guts, bright orange and violent reds and virulent golds….so intense they were almost alive, even though they heralded the death of all life for the coming months. Those colors of fall? They made me deliriously happy and intensely sad at the same time, because they represented death, which always made me sad. It’s like I could feel the trees, singing out to us to remember them while they died; to witness them, for though they were leaving, they would be back in the spring.

But not all of them would always come back. There was always some kind of damage, some kind of cold, some kind of storm that went deep enough to snuff one of them out permanently, every winter.

They were such a beautiful, beautiful death though, weren’t’ they? And I was happy that the fall colors my kids would see in our new home were more vivid than those they grew up with, but sad that they might never see the vivid death throes of a New England fall.

And then I thought of apples.

Fall was when we would go apple picking, every single year. We’d do it on field trips with the school, but we’d go as a family, too. We’d pick apples and buy fresh pressed apple cider and apple cider donuts and then go home and make fresh apple pies, eating them as soon as we could—sometimes not even letting them cool—the juice like liquid gold, runny and not set and sweet and burning hot and dripping all over everything as we stuffed out faces with joy.

I remember when I grew up and started doing all that “fancy” cooking, I would experiment with my own fall apple pie recipes, but they were never as good as yours.

Did you ever write down your recipe for apple pie? Can you send it to me? I would love to make one for the kids—even though they won’t be real New England apples.

Love,

Me

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Dear Me,

OMG I almost forgot about that album!

Earth Angel, Earth Angel! Will you be mine? My darling dear, Love you all the time. I’m just a fool, A fool in love with youuuuuuuuuuu…….you ooohh ooohhh oooooooohhhhhhhh!!!

I’m over here cracking up. We really did sing our hearts out, didn’t we? I always felt like I was 13 years old again, singing those songs. They were my favorites.

And what was up with that goat? I could never see him as clearly as you could cause I was driving, but those glimpses I caught? It made me question whether or not we should keep going to that rinky-dink town and that rinky-dink school, cause what were they doing with that goat?????

But we were having so much fun on the drive and bonding in ways we had never bonded before that I knew I would never stop. I saw your joy during those long drives, too.

I’m wondering who you watched cooking for you when you were growing up, because YOU KNOW I DON’T HAVE RECIPES. I cut that shit up, put it in a pot, seasoned it, and then kept rolling. Y’all ate it cause you were hungry. But also, I admit it was good. I wasn’t a bad cook—just not a recipe follower.

And so no, I don’t have that recipe. But I can tell you the secrets, even though if I had told you back then, you probably would have vomited from the sheer lunacy behind the idea:

First, make your own pie crust, and

Second, you have to get a good, GOOD chunk of Vermont cheddar cheese. The expensive kind. Very sharp. White. And you have to shred just a little bit of it into the top of the pie crust—not the whole thing JUST THE TOP. And it shouldn’t be visible, because you don’t want people to know what all is in there—cause people get weird over different kinds of ingredients. And you don’t want to make it too cheesy—just put a little bit in to give it a good, salty bite. It’s kind of like the equivalent of putting salt on top of freshly baked chocolate chip caramel cookies. Somehow, the salt enhances everything—and with the cheddar? The saltiness AND the sour bite make those freshly picked apples SING!

When you make it, let me know how it comes out, okay? I wish I was close enough to taste your fall creations. I could go for a good chunk of pie, right now.

I’m going to take my own side note here to say that Autumn, my beloved daughter, is not death, even though it might feel like that.

It’s rest. A pause. A deep hibernation that helps us rejuvenate our lives.

It makes me sad that you think of it as death, because that insinuates you feel like everything alive always has to keep going, glowing brightly, fresh and green always, never stopping, always producing, to be considered alive. To be considered worthy to be alive.

And that’s just not true.

We all need rest, and that means that sometimes—we have to stop for a moment and drop our leaves, and do absolutely nothing for awhile.

It’s a natural part of the rhythm of life.

I hope you are taking the rest you need and deserve, these days. It’s important to STOP every now and then, and nurture yourself in the cocoon of warmth a good apple pie can bring to you.

Love,

Mama