You’ve got to take pity on the poor apple. For such a small fruit, it must carry the burden of so much symbolic and cultural baggage, from religion to fairy tales to patriotic slogans. For example, the apple is usually the fruit of choice when depicting the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, the juicy temptation the serpent offers to Eve, who in turn offers it to Adam, thereby establishing the basic fallen human condition for all eternity, according to the Bible. On a much smaller scale, Sleeping Beauty’s evil stepmother tricks her into eating a poisoned apple, causing Sleeping Beauty basically to fall into a coma. But, in a schizophrenic turn of imagery, apples can also represent health, love, and a feeling of belonging. Want to instill a sense of patriotism? Just say something is as “American as mom and apple pie” and I immediately conjure up a picture of a large family picnic on a Kansas farm with a fresh-baked apple pie cooling on the windowsill. And who hasn’t heard the motto, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”?
It’s a good thing there are so many different varieties of apples to shoulder the responsibility of representing so much. I often think about which apple varieties would be most appropriate for which scenario. I wonder if the Tree of Knowledge might have had crab apples for its fruit because they are exquisitely small and delicate-looking but so sour that, if you bite into it, your face contracts into a grimace of contorted puckering. And Sleeping Beauty’s stepmother would have fed her Fujis or Braeburns, apples with such luscious sweetness that the taste of any poison would be masked. The best apples for apple pies is, of course, always the subject of much debate, but I laugh a little because apple pie is such an appropriate dessert for a country of immigrants: one can use a mix-and-match approach with the apples, combining some Granny Smiths with some Galas or Golden Delicious or any other apple at hand.
In Korean, the word for apple is “sa gwa.” But the word “sa gwa” has a couple different definitions: it can also mean “apology.” This kind of multiplicity of the meaning of one word happens in every language. Just look at the word “treat”: it can mean a little something-something you give yourself when you’re having a rough day; it can mean paying for your friend’s dinner at a restaurant; or it can mean tending to an injury or disease. I’ve been hearing a lot of apologies in the news recently. Target apologized for the breach in security of its credit card database. The Patriot-News newspaper apologized for an editorial dismissively belittling the Gettysburg Address when first delivered by President Lincoln. So many celebrities have apologized for unwise comments spoken during unguarded moments. Some of these apologies are sincere and some aren’t.
I know that my teenage years were egocentric ones. Though my self-absorption may have been somewhat typical of teenagers, that doesn’t make it any less painfully embarrassing when I look back at my younger self and see how little I appreciated what my parents did for me, how hard they worked to give me so many opportunities. I’m so grateful that they are still here so that I can show them I’ve finally matured enough to recognize how grateful I should be. And to apologize for not realizing this sooner.
There is a very interesting expression in Korean that is (roughly) pronounced (I apologize for the bad transliteration, since Korean uses a different writing system): chal mo tay yo. The meaning of this expression changes depending on where you put the stress. If you put the stress on the first word and say CHAL mo tay yo, you are explaining that you really can’t do something well, that you are not skilled or talented enough to sing well or cook well or draw well. If you put the stress on the second word and say chal MO tay yo, you are saying that you have made a mistake and you apologize. To my parents, I say chal MO tay yo.
Some things are easier to apologize for than others. Apologizing for history seems to be particularly difficult, for some reason. It took the United States almost 150 years to acknowledge its terrible legacy of slavery; the United States senate finally offered an official apology for slavery, in 2009. Some apologies, even once given, are so painful that the guilty want to retract it and deny it was ever even necessary. I’ve been thinking about this recently as I watch the Japanese government’s struggle with its terrible legacy of sexually enslaving women during World War II. Given the euphemism of “comfort women,” these were often teenage girls or young adult women, kidnapped from their families in Korea, brought to Japanese soldiers fighting in China or other parts of Asia, and forced to “comfort” these soldiers repeatedly, under brutal conditions, with no consideration for their health or well-being, and then tossed away, ridden with awful diseases, injuries, and self-loathing. Very few Japanese thought these women deserved any kind of “treat”ing.
In 1993, the then-Chief Cabinet Secretary of the Japanese government, Yohei Kono, issued a formal apology for Japan’s forcible abduction and sexual enslavement of Korean women during World War II. In what has come to be known as the Kono Statement, Secretary Kono admits to the Japanese military’s knowledge of and active participation in forcing “comfort women” to service Japanese men at “comfort stations.” The statement reads, in part: “Undeniably, this was an act, with the involvement of the military authorities of the day, that severely injured the honor and dignity of many women. The Government of Japan would like to take this opportunity once again to extend its sincere apologies and remorse to all those, irrespective of place of origin, who suffered immeasurable pain and incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women.” Unfortunately, the Japanese government has tried many times, as recently as last week, to retract, diminish, or revise the apology and, thus, revise its guilt.
Think how much forgiveness there would be in this world if apologizing were as easy as changing the emphasis of our words or offering a bushel of apples.