I love my Apple gadgets. My iPod, my iPad, my MacMini, and my MacBook. Like the multiple kayaks in my garage, each fulfills a different purpose. I have a boat for big waters, a boat for small rivers and flat water, a recreational boat for friends, a Kevlar old school boat that is a keeper – very light – I can easily pop it up my shoulder, hoist it up on the car, and look like an Amazon strongwoman. And then there’s my husband’s boat. Sounds like overkill, yes, but each boat isn’t interchangeable with another. It would be insanity to take my small riverboat island-hopping on the St. Lawrence River. And my island-hopping sea kayak would be of no use going down the Grand River that twists through my hometown.
Okay, so what about those Apples? My iPod is perfect for running at the gym (or should I say “plogging,” my unique blend of jogging/plodding), my iPad is becoming my favourite transportable tool – App loaded and ready wherever I happen to be – at the grocery store, or in my living room when I want to write with my feet up on the couch. My MacMini is my formal workstation - with a decent-sized monitor for my aging eyes. And speaking of aging, my aging MacBook is used less and less for writing, and more and more as hard drive storage - three emanations of computers and files reside within it. I recently uncovered in the MacBook nether regions a long forgotten story, re-bonded with the character, fell in love with her all over again, and the writing continues…
Apples. Macs. Mcintosh. The real-deal version of apples that grow on trees - I love those too. They're hardwired into my childhood memories, the hard drive that is my brain. Groves of Mcintoshes grew around my hometown in Eastern Ontario. Macs are the only kind of apples that I knew existed, until I grew up and had to do my own grocery shopping. Autumn along the St. Lawrence meant the deep reddening of the Maple trees, and the deep reddening of the Mcintoshes. The frost brought that tang-shiver taste to the apple, and we'd wait until that first frost to go to the orchard, and Dad would buy a bushel full. It was a ritual. And somewhere in there, stored with that Mcintosh memory, there's a layer of song, my mother singing, "I love you, a bushel and a peck." I thought at the time a peck was a peck on the cheek, a kiss.
The real apple of my eye these days is my (almost) fourteen-month-old grandson. He, too, loves Apples. He has his baby Apps on my iPad, can flick his baby finger sideways to rifle through to his favourite games and photos, squeeze his fingers to increase or decrease the screen size, loves the game Angry Birds. He also loves my iPod Touch, just an itsy bitsy iPad to him. Baby size. Loves it so much he decided to put it in his mouth. Sucked on it lovingly. That was the end of my iPod. It never recovered. The day before Christmas. Too late to put a new iPod on my Christmas wish list.
I must have been on a technological hit list, under some evil-Santa spell. My camera died that same day, a tough and rugged digital camera that is waterproof and coldproof and has survived two years of kayak trips. My last picture on the camera is baby boy in his highchair, an apple in one hand and an Apple in the other hand, bite marks in the apple-fruit, and suck marks on the iPod-Touch. I've sent the camera off to the Olympus folks, to see if they can save the camera, and if I'm really lucky, the baby-apple-Apple photo too.
More techie gadgets broke on Christmas Day. The DVD player for one. I watched just one of the three movie DVDs in my stocking before the DVD player bit the big one. We still haven't replaced it, since we tend to download videos, but that wasn't the point. It was Christmas Day, and the movies were holiday fare. It just wasn't the DVD player, and the camera, and the iPod Touch that gave up the ghost. It was also my husband's Christmas gift. I recently kicked my caffeine habit of many years, suffered through five full days of caffeine-head and detox to reach a caffeine-free state of body and mind. My husband is also a coffee-addict, still is, and he misses the Tim Horton coffee runs I would take at first light each morning, bringing each of us an extra-large to kickstart the day. So in the spirit of the season, I bought him a coffee machine, even though it meant I'd have to endure the tantalizing aroma in the morning while his coffee brewed. It was a gift of love. But on Christmas day, after turkey dinner, only coffee left to end a perfect meal, the new coffee machine went click-click-click-click, and nothing more. No coffee. Only cold water and dry coffee grinds.
The Tim Hortons that backs onto our house was open, I could see the cars in the drive-thru lineup. So I took the last vehicle parked in the driveway, and drove around the block to get coffee for my husband, daughter, and her partner, but true to the day, I missed the early closing of the coffee-shop by two minutes. Don't worry, the manager shouted at me through the closed window, the Tim Hortons up the street is open. So I drove up the street, rolled down the window, and ordered Christmas coffee for everyone but me. By now, the sun had set, and it was dark outside, and inside the car too. I couldn't see well enough to maneuver the toggle switch of the power window to shut it and kept opening the other windows, too. And I drove home that way, windows fully down, frigid air blowing in, the temperature well below zero. But I had the coffee, the successful hunter, or huntress.
The next morning, in the midst of Boxing Day Madness, I returned the coffeemaker and kept my calm, not a small feat, considering the throngs of shoppers, and also the task of fitting the coffeemaker and packaging back into the box to return it. Why is it that the box always seems too small? And how did the coffee machine fit into the box in the first place? Since I was out and about anyway, I treated myself to an iPod to replace my dead one, bought myself an iPod Nano. A green Nano, more of a Granny Smith than a MacIntosh, which suits me quite fine, and brings me full-circle, full-apple back to my grandson, the apple of my eye.
Baby boy has been diagnosed with food allergies, and now doesn't travel from home without an epicen jr. The egg allergy was discovered the first time he had scrambled egg, just a fingernail sliver. The wheat allergy was discovered when he ate a bit of toast. And the peanut allergy, well, that came up when the allergist pinpricked him during an allergen test. So what can he eat? I asked the allergist, feeling exasperated. (The kid's got to eat!) Meat, vegetables and fruits, he answered.
At home, I set baby boy in his highchair. He's been experimenting with finger foods, loves cheese, grapes, and - surprise, surprise - apples. So far, the food has been cut into tiny little pieces for easy chewing and swallowing. But he has that set of gorgeous teeth now…
So I take an apple from the refrigerator, a big round red apple, wash it, peel it. And I hand the apple to baby boy. Intact except for the peel.
His eyes grow huge. He takes the apple in both hands, and bites into it. He chews and swallows the little bit of apple he's bitten off, leaving tiny bite marks in the white flesh of the apple. Then he starts to laugh with delight, shouts in that unintelligible baby language. He's never before been given anything so large to eat. He looks at me with wonder, as if I'm one of the great wonders of the world.
And then he bites into his apple again.