One October, when my kids were probably 6 and 8 years old, we took them to Carpinito’s corn maze.

The day we decided to take the kids to the corn maze was one of those beautiful fall days; the sun was shining, the leaves were turning their brilliant reds and oranges, and there was a chill in the air that reminded you of fall, but wasn’t too cold.

The kids were delighted with the corn maze, following the map, getting lost, punching their cards when we reached certain points of the maze. They would race to each point to be the first to punch their card, and then enthusiastically study the map, leading us to the next punch point.

There was no contest involved, no one checked to see if you completed the maze; it was the principle of the thing to have punched all the points on your card, each punch having a different design so people knew you weren’t “cheating.”

It was one of those perfect days you remember forever.

Everyone was having fun, everyone was enthusiastic, the weather was cooperative. But my most poignant memory of that day was at the end of the maze.

Of course, being a business, Carpinito’s sells more than just an opportunity to go through the maze, they also sell pumpkins, bouquets, and fall produce.

My girls marveled at the array of colors of the produce stacked into large baskets.

They stared in wonder at the different kinds of corn displayed. But they were most excited when they came upon the fresh apples and decided they were hungry.

They could each pick out their own apple! They considered each apple carefully. When they chose, we purchased the apples and they sat on hay bales in front of the corn maze and crunched into those fresh-crop apples, thoroughly enjoying every morsel.

They had eaten apples before, even fresh-crop apples, but these apples were well deserved, after all, they had worked up an appetite bushwhacking their way through a maze. There was something special about consuming apples in front of a corn maze after a hard day of tracking; a kind of closure to a perfect day.

I snapped a tender picture of them with those apples and titled it “the apples of my eye” in my scrap book.

Fast forward six years.

My husband and I decided we would take the girls to the corn maze again. They were teen and almost teen last year. They didn’t want to go.

I told them it would be a “fun” family outing and they needed to get out in the fresh air, because they spent too much time sitting around.

They still didn’t want to go. I made them go. I will never make them go again.

They pouted through the maze, getting angry when we got lost, complaining their feet hurt, they were impatient when I tried to take pictures, and on and on.

When we got out of the maze, they just wanted to go home. I wish I could tell you we bought them an apple and their bad attitudes magically melted away, but I can’t.

I was pretty annoyed by the time we got out of the maze and we just drove home in stony silence as I deliberated how I would title this year’s pictures. The apples in my eyes had decomposed with my mood.

This year I will not make them go through the corn maze. I won’t even invite them.

I’m going to have my husband take a day off work so it’s not too crowded and we are going to go through the corn maze at our leisure.

We’ll race to each point to punch our cards first. Then when we are done, we will carefully consider the apples, pick one, sit on a hay bale in the sun and consume our apples in the crisp fall air while we contemplate our hard work bushwhacking through the corn maze.