Sleepless

This is a game.  The scene is a beautiful pizza pie and each player has a slice.  No one is left pie-less in the group because there are only three players and everyone has 1/3. The rules are that you must finish your slice on your own.  You cannot hide it under your grandmother’s antique kitchen table and forget about it.  You can’t pretend to eat it and spit it out after the judges turn their heads.  You can’t sleep on it for days and wait until it disintegrates into your bedsheets or sofa.  The ONLY logical option would be to eat your slice.  Not to waste, destroy, throw away, feed to your cat, Meow, because you just can’t.  You have to eat it.  And you better because a thousand others want to play the same game and they can’t for whatever reason.  Eat your pizza, for Pete’s sake.  Whoever Pete is: Please, pity your own purse because no one else will pity such a pretty pocket as yours.  Someone may pickpocket your purse and that would surely be a prickly pay when Pete should have just given it away.

The apple orchard in Shelburne, Massachusetts. 

Shilpa and I joined my dear, life long friend, Kelly, for an extravagant day of apple picking.  It was a Saturday with twenty brand new people and a common goal: Collecting apples by the bushel and baking pies. 

The drive out of Boston may have been my favorite part. It was such a nice change of scenery.  I’m used to such a different kind of beauty, a more man made one.  In the city it’s tall brick and concrete buildings, pavement for sidewalks, construction and loud drills, traffic lights, taxi cabs and car horns, dark tunnels on the T, and lastly my school and talkative and lovely classmates and friends.

Saturday was different in many ways.  The small two-lane highway cut through a sort of spacious suburb.  Winding down the road our path was covered in brilliant verdant foliage and sparsely spaced mailboxes.  With the trees overhanging our path, Nick pointed out that some of them were beginning to turn early.  Boston in the Fall!  Here is it!  The shy orange as an eager sunrise blossoming in the leaves.  With the sun’s golden rays, translucent leaves clap as the breeze catches the branches.  Shadows shake down onto the road.  It was such a foreign place, yet I felt so at home.  I’d definitely say fairies inhabit this place and I dare say I’ll join them one day.

Rows and Rows of them! Macintosh, Granny Smith, red, green, deep purple even!  I’ve arrived at the orchard!  These apple trees covered what seemed to be acres of land!  Once we parked we walked into the small market and sampled some apple cheese!  A small three-piece band played silly snip-its of overtures like william tel’s and a little yankee doodle as well.

Once we purchased our bushel, I was a free woman to explore as I may and taste as I like!  I climbed trees to reach the best apples, and I climbed Kelly once or twice, too.  It was an adventure I’ll always remember. This was the day I saw real Massachusetts.  Not the man made kind, the God made kind.  I can hardly wait to go back.