The Apple Picking Gang

My mama and daddy up and went missing last Friday. I probably should have panicked, but my mother would frown upon that. So I went out the garden and weeded around my collard plants and waited for news. Saturday afternoon I received word from my mama that she and my daddy had run away and were staying with the Patels. She emailed:

We are up in the mountains this weekend. Our van is filled up with junk we have bought unintentionally while trying to find apples for sale. We are in Blairsville tonight. As soon as we find apples, we will buy some boxes of them (honey crisps, I hope), wedge them in among the chairs and settee and various brickabrack and start back. The people in my "Farmers Group" have all been coming up here for apples, and so we thought they would be all over the place. We saw one stand but didn't stop because we thought we were just getting warm.  It will be to NC tomorrow to find where all the apples are.  We will get plenty for all of us. We are staying with the Patels tonight.

I considered whether this is how Alzheimer's starts - on Thursday a person's parents are at home and accounted for and on Saturday they've taken the car and moved in with strangers, excusing all with cliched apple-a-day cockamamie. I ventured some reality orientation in my reply:

I hope the Patels have put you in their best room. Perhaps they can guide you to where the apples are hidden. By the way, not everything people - even farm people - post on FaceBook is true. 

To avert worry, I went back out to my garden and picked peppers while thinking ill thoughts of farm people image crafting on FaceBook. On Sunday, my mother messaged again:

It is almost 3 PM and at last we have the apples. We are just leaving the orchard with Cameos and Jonagolds, thanks be to God.  Also, and from various locations, we have a settee, a table, two chairs, 12 barbed wire stars, 12 birdhouses, 5 plants, two safety vests, 10 door mats, various cups and figurines,4 cowboy hats, two hornets nests, 2 large gem stones, other miscellany too numerous to mention, and a large chocolate malt. We are turning for home, as soon as we figure out this convoluted intersection right here.

 My pulse quickened at the words "chocolate malt." The prospect excited me. I pictured my father, dressed in a safety vest, revolving the car in a round-about and my mother, dressed in a safety vest and flailing at a swarm of hornets, ordering him to exit it after each orbit. This is not how Alzheimer's starts, I decided. This is how a good adventure ends. 

The chocolate malt did not survive the return trip, but my parents and the apples did.

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