Rainy Day Apple Pie

I have been busier than I like lately.  With Jack back at work, I have been poorly juggling home, soccer, school, and family obligations.

One of the balls that got dropped was spending enough time with Harold and Rubilee while Jack is away at work.  He was home most of the weekend, but left again Sunday.  When I went by Monday, Harold was as poorly as I have ever seen him, depressed and drained of energy, still in his pajamas and all but giving up on life.  I stayed a long time visiting, and though he didn't have the energy to visit, just having company seemed to perk him up a bit.

Yesterday he got up and had a normal day, at least as normal as any day is when one is hooked to an oxygen tank.   When I stopped by last night, he was positively chatty, with a pink to his cheeks and a sparkle in his eye.  I stayed a long time again, but this was a fun chat about our favorite old movies and memories of his from being a kid in Grand Saline.

I didn't bring home many papers to grade tonight, not because the grading fairy had come, but because it was soccer night.  As the afternoon crept on in a drizzle and mist, soccer was postponed until tomorrow.  The house was a wee bit cooler and Bella got her homework done without drama or tears or lolly gagging.  Not a bad afternoon at all, especially since there was time to bake.  Harold has a sweet tooth - he will eat any sweet I make that his false teeth can handle - but his favorite is just an old fashioned apple pie. I still had pie crust from the wedding baking last weekend and I had a fresh bag of  honey crisps. I did not have pie pans.  Everyone of them is still at Momma's from the wedding dinner.

I made a sheet of little hand pies, apples peaking from the edges, cinnamon and nutmeg and sugar oozing from their seams.  Bell and I delivered them warm from the oven just as Harold got home.  Today he was still feeling good, still chatty.  This evening's memories were of growing sugar cane and making syrup as a child on his daddy's farm.  I enjoy these visits.  I hope to goodness my cousins are visiting like this with my grandpa, but I fear they don't.

I did not make pie because I had to, but because I could on this rainy day, because there is an old man up on the hill who still has a sweet tooth who might have a good enough appetite to eat dinner if there was a dessert tempting him, because he  shares his stories and his family with me.  Just so many becauses.

Maybe Rubilee let him have it for supper with ice cream while they watched the rain on the lake.