Apples, Septembers

I never researched old age. It always seemed too far in the future.

I didn’t dare allow myself in all the 57 years we shared to consider the not so remote possibility of facing life without Him, the partner who made all my dreams come true,

After it happened, I seemed to exist in an emotional limbo; never quite fully awake, never really cognizant of reality.

It’s been sixteen years and I have been blessed in so many ways. My life alone in the white cape cod with the black shutters ended in October 2016 when my youngest son introduced me to a lovely residence in Michigan, It is now a home, where I am more than comfortable, and oh so well, taken care of.

Yet there remains, always the void, of his absence. Possibly it is stronger in September, because that is when he left after a long and painful goodbye.

And possibly that is why on another September day, I remembered the apples in nightgowns, one of his “favorite things.” I discovered the delicious and simple recipe (with the aid of frozen puff pastry) in The German Cookbook by Mimi Sheraton, gifted to us by an airline colleague.

I hope you will enjoy it as much as we did in the happy Septembers we shared before he traveled home.

APPLES IN NIGHTGOWNS

2 Sheets Frozen Puff pastry cut into quarters

8 Small apples

3 tbsp sugar

1/4 cup chopped nuts

2 tsp cinnamon

2 tsp’s citrus marmalade

Core and peel apples, set one in each pastry square.

Combine all other ingredients and place a little in center of each cored apple.

Cover each apple with square of dough envelope style and seal with either milk or egg white.

Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minute.

And never forget: “Though lovers be lost, love shall not. And death shall have no dominion.”

― Dylan Thomas