Cherry Season!

It is cherry season in these parts. Tart-red cherries. Perfect for pies and other yummy desserts. Nothing puts a pucker on your face like a tart cherry *wink, wink*

Ok, minds back out o' the gutters please, we are talking fruit here!

Whenever cherry season swings round these parts I have a fond rememberance of days past.

When I was in elementary school, the son of my parents' dearest friends was my dearest friend. I spent more time with his family than my own.

His grandparents lived on a horse farm and had the best, most productive cherry trees. One late spring we - all us kids ranging in age from 6 to 16 - decided to pick cherries. We picked bushels and then set about pitting them. After we were all covered in cherry juice, someone got the bright idea to start a pit-war. We set up teams and got some plywood from the barn to use as a shield/fort. At about mid-orchard two team members squared off and walked off a good distance, like a proper duel and pits began flying!

When each side had run out of pits and went through some respective crying and nashing of teeth - "you did that on purpose!" "Moooooom!!!" "That really hurts!" "Stop aiming for my eyes!" we began gathering smooshy, rotten cherries from the ground below.

Now, the sting of pits hitting our bare flesh was accompanied by the squish of rotten fruit. But neither side let up until the oldest and the youngest on one team began a fist-fight of unknown origin.

We, to every member of each team, were covered in pits, and cherry juice and mud and grass and stickiness. We were forbidden from entering the house to change clothes. Each of us stripped to skivvies (we were younguns!) and got hosed off by a very cold garden hose.

That sunny late june day will always stick out in my mind. For that one day, all us kids, cousins, step-children and friends, got along the best we could, took out all our frustrations in an hour and managed to have a great time all day!

I haven't had much contact with the kids from that sunny afternoon. I see a couple now and then, but we have all gone our separate ways. I wonder if they remember that cherry pit war like I do. I wonder if when they stand in a cherry tree orchard they have the urge to fling rotten cherries at the nearest bystander.

My husband will attest, I enjoy flinging rotten fruit at him at picking time. Cherry picking in my house is not a peaceful event. I relive that june day to a small extent every season.

My trees are ripening now, and soon, the house will be filled with the smell of those tart cherries baking into pies. I make a mean cherry pie! But I wonder, what kinds of innocent experiences will my son have that he will remember far into his adulthood. What scent or scene will take him back? Will the smell of cherry pies baking remind him of when his momma chased him around the cherry trees pelting him with rotten fruit? Better still, will that be a good memory - or one he'll need years of therapy to come to terms with? Ahhh, the questions!

For now, I'll await my cherries and I'll sit in the orchard on picking day remembering a pit-war fought long ago.