Cherry pickin'

“Uncle! Uncle!” the girls called out to me, “can we take some of the cherries?” “Sure you can” I said, even though the cherry tree does not technically belong to me. . . it belongs to my neighbor. But about a third of it is in my yard, and Mladen, the neighbor, gives me complete access to it. Here is a photo of a bunch of cherries.





I have been baking cherry pies and such pretty much non-stop this week.. But it is the pits, getting the pits out! In fact cherries are a pretty good metaphor for life. No matter how sweet and juicy and wonderful they/it are/is, there are still those darn pits to deal with!

Sitting at my kitchen table de-pitting these piles of cherries always gives me a crick in my back. And even the anticipation of a cherry cobbler does not lessen the pain always. Removing the pits in my life causes me pain too. Especially in the patience it requires.

Patience to get to the fruit, patience to know when the ripe moment has arrived, patience to see the cobbler in what I am doing everyday! Cherry picking seems like lots of fun, but unless you keep a sense of wonder about it, like the girls in the first paragraph, it can be the pits.