We went to brunch with our friends Kat and Eric and their adorable toddler Carolyn this morning, and then off to pick apples. It was a day filled with small joys. The first was that Carolyn now has a sign for me. Kat and Eric decided when she was only a couple months old that they would teach her baby signs - a pronouncement that I sort of smiled and nodded my head at because I had seen it fall by the wayside with several other new parents I knew. I thought it was a silly idea, doomed to failure.

I was wrong.

Carolyn became the best behaved, most socialized baby I've ever met because she had language with which to communicate her wants and needs long before most babies can even say mama and dada. Through signs she could tell you that she was hungry or thirsty, what she wanted to eat or drink, and if she wanted you to read her a story, play music, or take her to the park. She even suggested that the family needed to go to dimsum and invite Uncle Jim. It really is quite remarkable. Because she could communicate her needs, she rarely got frustrated, and that meant very little fussing and frustration - they can take her anywhere, and she fits right in.

After a while, she began making up her own signs, or attributing certain signs to certain people. Uncle Jim's sign was the sign for hair, because he has a bushy beard. Grandpa's sign was "hat" and Grandma's "lady." Ferrett would always make these silly, bouncing-finger signs to her, and right after I bought her two albums of music by John McCutcheon (my own kids' favorite albums when they were little), she began making the bouncing fingers sign in association with them - they were "Uncle Ferrett music." even though Uncle Ferrett had nothing to do with their arrival in her life.

But I had no sign. I lacked a particularly distinctive characteristic that would earn me an immediate sign, and while she was always glad to see me, Carolyn was mute when it came to labelling me in any way.

Today, that clearly changed. The last time we were over at their home, Eric remarked that Carolyn had made the sign for the letter "G" and then pointed at me, but it was still sketchy. Today in the car on the way to apple picking she signed "G" and pointed to me over and over again. It's silly, but it gave me an inordinate thrill to know that I am important enough in her life to merit my own designation.

The other joy of the day happened at the apple farm. We went into the little shop and tasted varieties of apples. In the last 6 years or so, I have been incapable of eating more than one slice of an apple without developing an allergic reaction. But I love good apples so much that I will risk the occasional slice. This time, I tasted an apple variety I had never eaten before, called "Crispin'," that was so delicious that I had to buy a bag, even if I could only eat them with a Benadryl chaser.

But I didn't have a reaction.

Then we went out into the orchard and picked another variety called Ovation. Kat bit into one, thinking it was a Golden Delicious, and asked me to taste it because it seemed too tart to her. I ended up eating that whole apple. Without a reaction.

Maybe it is, after all, the crap that agrobusiness orchards put on and in the apples that causes me the most trouble, not the apples themselves.

I cannot convey how much simple joy there was in the act of eating a crispy, juicy apple right down to the core. It sounds ridiculous, but it felt like a benediction. Obviously I can't eat apples the year 'round, but if I can just enjoy them in the fall, fresh from the tree, without suffering, I will be happy.