Ghosts

It is full-on fall in Seattle with leaves rapidly meeting the ground, being helped by the rain that has been falling all day. It's the beginning of our longest season. Fall blends into winter, winter into spring.

It's not all that bleak, at least not yet. Fall sparks nostalgia in me; the ghosts of my past emerge in subtle ways. Last night I dreamed of my childhood. Specifically filling the wood box in our kitchen, which was one of my daily jobs. At the time I hated it. Today, the slightest smell of wood burning in the crisp fall air takes me back thirty years to the ranch in Montana.

Nostalgia, like fall, is good and bad. I like the chill that permeates air, the angled light from a sun that doesn't ever quite make it all the way into the sky. Ranch work was hardest in the fall and winter. Bone-chilling wind and temperatures and all the work done outside. Today, I avoid that kind of work if possible... and its simple jobs when I do it; just the ritual cleaning up of the yard. Today, I spent the afternoon prowling fruit stands and markets looking for fall goodies. Delecata squash, pears, apples and yams all made it into my basket at Carpenito Brothers in Kent.

I went to Kent because I thought it might be my best chance to find crab apples. As a child, one of my favorite treats was my grandmother's pickled spiced crab apples. The aroma of her preparing them is a central memory for me; another haunting from a time that I cannot escape and that I often want to revisit. I decided that I would make them myself from her recipe; it will be the first time in at least twenty years that anyone has made these apples.

Turns out, crab apples are difficult to find. From the produce people at three different markets: "Crab apples? Really? You may need to find a tree..." Undeterred, I went home and logged onto the world's biggest market: Google. There, in about twenty-five seconds I found my crab apples. $50 for 10 pounds including shipping. It kind of defeats the purpose. Back in the day crab apples were free. That's why they were canning and pickling fruit. Today, they are exotic.

The crab apples are a symbol of a simpler time; I'll make them and probably find out that they aren't what I have built them up to be. For me, it's the apples. For someone else, it's some other symbol. Last month I was looking on Gilt.com and found brand-new vintage Star Wars action figures from the 1970s. They were selling in the range of $75 - $200 each. The people who are buying them? Middle-aged people desperately trying to revisit their youth. Just like the Boomers before them. And the Millenials after. Every generation does this; ghosts drive every generation and everyone wants to exorcise them. 

Today fall is ushered in for me by the rain, the smell of wet wood smoke and the longing for my pickled spiced crab apples. The older I get, the more I am removed from my youth, and the ghosts emerge more frequently. It's not that you can ever stop the them; it's how you manage the visits.