Apple pie - a snapshot in words

Tonight I was reading through some of the files in my "writing" folder on the computer.  Since I didn't have a plan for today's blog post, I was looking for inspiration or ideas.  The folder is full of various things I've written: published articles or essays, potential blog posts, opinion pieces written in anger, beginnings of short stories, letters I'll never send, philosophical musings on various topics, word snapshots, etc.

Sometimes I wish I had consistently kept a journal over the years to record the ordinary moments of daily life.  But I didn't.  Yet I do have little word snapshots here and there - in computer documents, in a notebook, in a handmade card, in a blog post.  I appreciate the picture that can be conjured by these words.  One such word snapshot, written about two years ago, was filed in my writing folder under "apple pie."  Since we're entering apple season and since the emotions evoked are ones that I experience more and more in my children's rapidly passing tween and teen years, I'm sharing it today:

I am sitting at the kitchen table with my ten year old daughter and thirteen year old son.  “This apple pie is good,” I say.  We are all three busy devouring it.  “I’m enjoying mine,” answers my son.  He says that so sincerely, so innocently, so happily.  And instantly, I am fighting back unexpected tears.  These are tears perhaps of happiness, but also of sorrow.  And yet this is no occasion to be sad.  We have had a lovely day.  On this sunny and crisp October Wednesday, the three of us made apple pie together.  They did most of the work – mixing up the dough for the crust, peeling the apples, covering them with cinnamon and sugar.  I rolled out the crust, although I probably should have left it to them.  I’m no expert.  Our pie looks overfilled and the crust is lumpy and uneven.  Just like my heart.  And just like my heart, this pie is full of love.  In this pie is the love of a brother and a sister who at times seem to bicker nonstop, but can also be each other’s fiercest friends and most earnest companions.  Who just a bit earlier were laughing hysterically while playing Guess Who? - a very silly board game that we apparently have not outgrown.  Increasingly now, I recognize that these days are more behind us then ahead of us.  Even my daughter is more than halfway to the official adult age of eighteen.  Closer to that, than to my womb.  Still, I fight back the tears and finish my pie.  I am so grateful to have had this moment among many others.  To have spent the afternoon baking pie with my children.  

Those words were written almost two years ago.  My children are now twelve, fifteen and seventeen years old.  I feel these moments ever more increasingly.  We can't stop it or slow it down.  We want them to grow into adulthood - that's the goal.  And yet the sorrow we experience at seeing their childhoods pass so quickly is no less real than the joy and pride we experience at seeing them grow into young adults.

We hold on to each beautiful moment with them, as we also begin to let them go into their own bright and expectant possibilities.