On Reaching Applesauce
Around this time ten years ago, my father gave me two albums for my birthday. The first one, the one I had asked for, was a Metro Station album. I was fourteen then, and still developing a taste in music. For the first few weeks I listened to that album constantly. Then I promptly moved on, though occasionally I would still mix “Now That We're Done” or “True to Me” into a playlist.
Keb'Mo's self-titled album was produced the year I was born—a fact I wouldn't learn for eight more years, until the gesture was long since dust and could not be properly thanked for. And my dad didn't mention it. He was like that—putting so much thought into the gifts he gave that sometimes it was a puzzle to figure out why exactly he had gotten them for you. I listened to three songs off of that one, and then it sat on my bookshelf collecting dust for a long time.
When he next called, my dad asked me how I'd liked the Keb'Mo' album.
“Not much.” I always had an impossible time trying to lie to my dad, even for the most well-intentioned reasons. Even if, perhaps, it would be much better for both of us. “It's kind of weird.”
“Well.” My dad had a making that one word into two syllables when he thought you said something funny, but he didn't want you to catch him laughing. “You'll grow into it. I couldn't buy you that Train Station or whatever album unless I got you something actually decent to go along with it.”
I think I quipped back something along the lines of how Metro Station was decent music, and he did laugh then, that deep belly kind of laugh that made the static on line curl around it.
/
My dad died on August 18th, 2016, from sepsis as a result of an operation on a brain tumor pressing against his cerebellum.
In the last conversation I have with him, he tells me the prospects look good. He will have to get some physical therapy if the surgeon's going to get clean margins, but the surgery won't affect his cognitive abilities. And this is the surgeon's area of expertise. There's nothing to worry about.
“I've got some bad apples,” he says. “But at least we can make some applesauce out of them.”
I want to tell him that there is nothing "applesauce" about a brain tumor. That I don't care how small, or how easy the recovery, or how experienced the surgeon, or how much worse other people might have it. Other people are not my dad.
But my dad is also not one for big sentiments. So I laugh, because I know that he wants me to laugh.
“So tell me.” His voice sounds far away through the phone line, as if he is already leaving me. “I want to know all about this upcoming trip. You said you're taking the boyfriend with you?”
So I tell him silly things. I babble. I tell him we are taking the train to Michigan, that the train will at least better than flying, even though he already knows how much I hate flying. I tell him that after trying my grandmother's Persian food, my boyfriend will no longer want my sad imitation. I list all the foods I am bringing home with me: real Iranian pita bread, and jars of my grandmother's torshee, and that for all the complaining I did in high school about kabob, I think now it was really just a matter of overexposure, and by god, I just want some kabob.
I tell him that when he gets better, I'll come to see him. I tell him I will move to Boston, and once I'm there, he'll have to go into hiding just to get rid of me. I ask when I should call my step-mom for updates.
“Friday,” he says. “Friday afternoon, the procedure should be done.”
“I'll call Friday.”
“Good.”
I think, be okay. Please.
/
When they told me he was going, I didn't believe them. There was no after without him. I thought of my wedding, the one where he wouldn't be there to walk me down the aisle. I thought of the children I would someday have that would never know him. I thought of all the strange and scary things in my life that had yet to come, that I had yet to live through without him telling me to keep my chin up. I tried to imagine selling my first book—tried to imagine that day without my dad there, without that quiet beaming look he always gave me when he didn't know what to say but wanted to assure me he was listening. The images came up gray and filmy, incomplete, with a white scratch where he was supposed to be.
I thought of the National album I sent him for Christmas years ago, and how when I came to visit, he always had it playing in his car. I thought, I will never be loved like this again, and I am only twenty-two.
/
The night he died, my boyfriend and I held a wake. No family lived near us. It was only us in Iowa, alone. We drank red wine I could barely taste. We ate applesauce, and my hands shook so badly I got most of it on my shirt. We played the Keb'Mo' album he gave me when I was fourteen, and I discovered it was produced the year I was born, and my teeth rattled through the first three songs because the first thing I wanted to do was call my dad and tell him I had finally figured it out.
/
I wish I had more solid footing for you—some lovely statement to wrap this in a bow tie and make everything alright. I wish I could tell you everything was applesauce. I wish I could tell you that sentence doesn't haunt my dreams. But I've got a Keb'Mo' album I've listened to on repeat since August 2016, and four voicemails still saved on my phone that say otherwise.
I think a lot about what it will mean to reach applesauce. Applesauce, as in those last few words that stick with you and wiggle free of their context and take on a different life than what they used to have. I mean applesauce as a state of mind. I mean applesauce as in “we got some bad apples, but everything's going to be just fine.” Maybe that's what my dad wanted for me. Maybe, through Metro Station and Keb'Mo', through kabob and future weddings, that's what he's left me with. I hope it's enough.