My father grew up on a small farm in Poland, when times were hard. To make matters worse, his own father had died in World War I when he was four. I never asked him how his mother managed - though I know grandparents and other relatives lived nearby.
My father never forgot those hard times.
When I was a teenager living in Kelowna, BC, with all its fruit trees - we had several in our backyard. My mother harvested the fruit and filled our freezer with pies.
Occasionally, I'd find an imperfect apple - one with a worm or earwig in it.
"Yuck! I don't want to eat that!" I remember once telling my dad.
"Oh, that's the sweetest one," he replied. "When I was a boy in Poland, we'd say: The worms know which apples are sweetest - so those are the ones we'd really want to eat!"
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