2001-06-07 - 12:40 p.m.

I've been thinking about apple sauce lately; I bought organic apple sauce with cinnamon at Whole Foods, in convenient portable containers, and have been eating it all week. I never liked apples - they were such an effort to eat, that hard crunching required, and I could never chew up the red skin to my satisfaction; at some point, I would have to give up, and either swallow it, or spit it out. As much as I wouldn't eat apples because they were too hard, I wouldn't eat apple sauce because of the mushy consistency. There's nothing solid to hold on to, with apple sauce. It just slips right down your throat.

When I was in elementary school, I went to daycare with my sisters (an awful, awful place; they always made me go outside to play, but I just wanted to stay in, where it was cool and dark and I could read undisturbed), and there was a meningitis scare. Every child in the daycare had to take medicine. It was red, and powdery, and my mom mixed it with apple sauce so that we would take it. I refused to eat it. Finally, my mom let me mix it with water, which I was barely able to choke down, and I tried to hide the fact that most of the powder caked on to the sides and bottom of the glass.

For years I didn't eat apple sauce; I always associated it with that meningitis scare. But over Christmas, I went to Athens to visit my friend Adrienne, and stayed at her house. She is warm, and kind, and gentle, and when she heated up some apple sauce with cinnamon in the microwave late at night, and handed it to me, I ate it all, every last drop.

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