Crabapples

Sunday mornings were sourdough pancakes—for a long while shaped like “Jefferson airplanes,” according to my father, topped with transluscent red syrup from the crabapples that grew in the front yard—hellish to rake.  And while my mother drove out to the Lutheran church on Barcelona Road (crossing Madrid and Seville), and I went with her or didn’t, depending on the era, my father wrote his Sunday letters, one page typed, four or five paragraphs of wit and keen descriptive pleasure.

Saturdays were lawn mowing and the Met Opera broadcast and, of course, raking those crabapples before all else.

I have no ritual here, not even the farmers’ market.  I used to take coffee in a thermos to the riverfront park, one year, that’s about it.  I need a river, spiritual pursuits, letters, crabapples, something to mark the passing—or beginning—of another week.

image: Crabapple, a weaving by Bhakti Ziek