Apple Sauce

I have issues with apple sauce. When I was six, I was ill for about most of that year in my life--so much in fact that I may never donate blood or organs. I don’t remember too terribly much except for a lot of vomiting, pooping and sleeping. I clearly remember my mom being given a long pop sickle stick by the doctor so she could bring in a “stool sample”. At the time, I had no idea what stool was. But Mom made it easily clear to me by reprimanding me for flushing the toilet after I had spent several minuets reading the current Garfield comics.

I remember that pink medicine that had to kept in the fridge at all times. To this day, bubble gum flavored anything makes me want to puke. I once asked for a cotton candy flavored snow cone and got bubble gum by mistake. I asked the snow cone vendor is she wanted to take a blood sample.

The blood center was on the second floor of the hospital. I knew that floor so well that years later I’d taken Shawn to the second floor when he needed some blood drawn. We wandered around the Vampire Ward for several minuets before Shawn rudely suggested we ask for directions.

Shawn. Asking for directions. Imagine that. And apparently, they’d moved the Vampire Ward to the first floor some years ago.

I remember the blood-drawing nurses treating me like a six year old when it came time for the needle. I was so used to having needles in my arms that I looked like a tiny little heroin junkie. They didn’t even need to put the rubber band around my arm anymore. I’d just grab the half-pint needle the six of a horse’s leg and proclaim: “What you think I’m some kinda wimp? Yeah, yeah, yeah…stick the needle in my arm, fill the tube and gimme my Snoopy band-aid, dang it! I’m missing my cartoons you nag!”

And apple sauce. How I once loved the sweet, grainy taste of apple sauce. The sickness ruined it for me. I threw up most of the medicine that was given to me by my faithful mother. So to make it easier on my gag reflex, Mom would sneak crushed pills into a small bowl of…you got it.

Apple sauce.

Of course, like the blood thing, I got used to pills too. These days, I could swallow an Aspirin the size of a cantaloupe if you needed me to. And I wouldn’t even gag.

The next year, I found myself in my grandmother’s kitchen and though I was well, she was not. Wanting to help, I found myself crushing upwards to twenty pills and stirring them into small bowls of ice cream and apple sauce.

My Maw-maw never got used to being poked and swallowing pills the size of horse tranquilizers. She never got the chance. She died later that year due to the tumor in her brain taking over. Of course, even then I was making everyone laugh. I had once very innocently pointed to her catheter bag and asked why her orange juice was hung so low when her IV was so high. The entire room erupted with laughter and I felt quite embarrassed.


Shawn has recently become extremely addicted to cinnamon flavored apple sauce. He’s always offering me some but I just politely turn him down. Twenty-five years later and I have yet to take one taste of apple sauce.