When I was young, my family took me to an apple orchard one autumn weekend. It’s also the one drive to the orchard where I had my infamous sunglasses photo taken which became a household relic.
I don’t remember the drive there in full, just hazy memories of large open plains of grass and plots of many trees lined up as I watched in the back seat. But what I do remember clearly is standing between endless rows of apple trees with my dad. He showed me how to twist an apple off gently so the branch wouldn’t snap. I was a careful boy back then, surprisingly. I didn’t want to make the nice people working there mad. Back then, all the apples felt the same to me. I didn’t care if they were bright red or yellow-green. I was just excited to pick any apple at all and drop it carefully into the basket I was carrying. It wouldn’t be fun picking an apple that had already fallen on the ground, right?
For this assignment, I found a Creative Commons photo of apples hanging from a tree and edited it to recreate the feeling of how my mind remembers that day. In my edit, I left one apple glowing in a vivid red while muting all the others in deep unsaturation. On top of that bright apple sat a small butterfly with bright yellow wings. I kept its color intact too because it looked pretty important. I added the caption: “No matter how much time passes, one memory stays bright.” When I looked at it, it reminded me of how memories work. Most moments blur into grey and even forgotten, but a core memory from your childhood can stand out in perfect color, carrying with them unexpected details like a smell, a sensation–you name it.
Seeing this photo now makes me realize how small moments can root themselves so deeply. That orchard trip didn’t change my life in any dramatic way. But it still stayed with me, tucked between blurred memories of my childhood I rarely think about. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll take my own kids to an orchard one day and if they’ll remember it too. Maybe not everything. But maybe just one apple, glowing red under the sun, with a butterfly perched calmly on top, reminding them that even small fleeting things can be beautiful enough to hold onto forever.
