I was standing on top of the ladder trying to push aside my disappointment along with the heavily laden branches of my apple tree. “What a shame—so many worm holes this year,” I grumbled as I examined the almost-beautiful apple cupped in my hand. About four out of five apples I picked had at least one worm hole. We had been too busy to keep up the spraying this year and now we were reaping the results.
Even though sorely neglected, the apples had filled out well because of the perfect timing of the extra rain and strong winds we had at blossom and small fruit time. The result had been a thorough job of thinning!
I hadn’t had time to start picking the apples until after our first frost, but that in itself was inadvertently adhering to my Grandma Smith’s advice of letting the first frost “set the sugar” for the best tasting apples. As I nibbled around a worm hole, I had to admit that they were quite tasty, which only added to my dissatisfaction over my “would have been perfect” apples. After all, even though they were an ideal size and shape, a vibrant deep red, crispy, and bursting with a juicy sweet flavor, the bottom line was that most of them had worm holes!
I continued picking and, after several amazing acrobatic feats on the ladder precariously performed during my diligent search and examination mission, I eventually found enough “perfect” apples to take to my parents as a worthy offering of my love and esteem.
As my mom carefully arranged these faultless beauties in the fruit bowl, I couldn’t help but confess about my tree’s abundance of the less than perfect ones. I began to describe my dismay over the worm holes, but before I could continue, Mom’s laughter interrupted me.
“You know, Honey,” she told me, “I was full grown before I found out that worm holes were not a normal part of the apple. It took all eight of us kids alongside of Grandma and Grandpa to keep us fed during the Depression. Like many families, we asked permission to glean from the edges of the fields and what we could gather from the ground in the orchards. It was hard work, but we were thankful for what we brought home. We were poor, but we never went hungry. Just remember that there’s nothing wrong with a few worm holes that some old-fashioned elbow grease won’t take care of. Besides, by the time you’ve cut around the worm’s habitat, your apple is already in pie-size chunks, or is ready to cook down for applesauce—a real bonus, when you think about it. After all, the real measure of fruit is in the eating!”
Since I got home from Mom and Dad’s, I’ve been viewing my wormy apples in a different light. Expecting our self-defined version of perfection often robs us of thankfulness. Besides, perhaps by God’s definition, a perfect apple is one in which a worm has found a home.
