A Story of Families and Fighting

And of applesauce

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My family has applesauce in its veins, she told me, and it must be true: a pot was already boiling on her woodstove, the scents of cinnamon and ginger emerging into the air.

Fruit was dancing along her countertop, cores and seeds littering her cutting board. Her veined wrists twisting, she chopped one apple, while four more dropped from her cupboards.

Those weren’t the only such, either; in place of a doorjamb, there was a cardboard box bracing her fairylit door. Who needed this many apples? I thought, as another fruit piece tumbled quartered into the pot. Who needed that much applesauce, jarred in her fridge?

But I had forgotten about gifts, how her family might exchange these.

I had forgotten because earlier she detailed the fight, her greying hair falling forward in grief to hide her face. As a child there was no space for me, she said, sadness a weight in her voice as she spoke of neglect.

I had forgotten because I too had a family fight: my brother and I argued, and it has torn at my heart ever since.

The woman handed me a coring knife, and I thought about my brother. I am not young either; why do we struggle so with our families in middle age? The neglected woman reaches for a spoon to stir her…