The Richness of Apples

“I miss the apples”, a grade-school friend said to me recently.  He lives in Florida now and was referring to the apples that practically paved the roads and sidewalks, the fields and hills in my hometown each fall. Having been a pastoral place of farms and orchards, only the trees remained but they filled the autumn air with the honeyed scent of apples.  One needed only to bend over and grope beneath the dusty leaves to pluck a fallen specimen to munch on during the walk home from school.  Tart though the fruit was, the atmosphere was sweet with the apples, burning leaves, and wood smoke.

This ad is for Yardley’s Pot-o-Gloss lipgloss.  The model, Evelyn Kuhn’s cheeks are fever-bright and I bet she’s wearing the McIntosh Red gloss or perhaps Winesap.  Her features are strong enough to carry off the orange sweater along with the Buffalo plaid jacket in red and although the stylist may have created a mild cliche with the look, I love it and as a teenager I embraced it entirely.

Our little drugstore carried Pot-o-Gloss and buying a new color was the first rite of passage in fall.  Even if it was still too warm to wear woolens, a new apple-inspired lip color would promise things to come – late afternoon soccer games and Friday night lights, crisp Saturdays at the movies with friends, and sunshiny times outside and when we would not even think about diving into that chemistry homework or covering our text books with brown paper bags.

So now that we are all grown-up, how can we bring apple-richness to lives drawn by responsibilities?  What do we do when our heartstrings draw us back to blue skies, home fires, and long-ago friends?  We can start with an apple-red lip gloss…

My apple-polisher suggestion:

Mac’s Fresh Moroccan, a deep apple red softened with gold glints- perfect for crisp days as well as warm Indian Summer ones.  Your fall orchard, re-imagined.