Streaks of evening sun lay across the yard as we set up the family of ladders under our cherry tree yesterday: a very steep old theater ladder with rusty hinges, an extension ladder, and the baby - a stepladder.
The tree, with its dark green foliage, proudly wore round, red fruit as if sprinkled with decorations for a celebration of Christmas-in-June. We started picking and didn’t stop until four overstuffed bowls were full to the brim.
While adults perched among the branches with their silver bowls in hand, blue-eyed, one-year-old baby Josie replayed scenes from Little House on the Prairie below them. Her bare feet trotted here and there in the grass while she wore a slightly-dirty-around-the-edges, old-fashioned-loosely-cut summer outfit. Eager to explore mounds of loose dirt deposited by moles or crawdads, she dug in her toes and instinctively wiggled them until the dirt fell away. She climbed through the bottom rungs of the ladders as if they were part of her everyday terrain, and confidently pointed to her parents roosting in the tree as if it was perfectly normal for parents to pretend they were birds. The prickly weeds in our less-than-manicured lawn – those ones with the little stickers - didn’t seem to hinder her in the least. And cherries, well, according to Josie they must have been created as novelties to be squished by her little fists until their juice dripped down her arms. She was in her element.
When we came inside, she bawled like a prisoner who’d been locked behind bars. She pointed toward the door, clearly not willing to give up her Eden. And yet it was her bedtime, and we had a lot of pitting to do.
I will long remember Josie’s honest enjoyment of the most simple and richly rewarding entertainment possible: family members happily engaged with each other in nature, working and playing together, belonging right there in the dirt and the grass and evening sunshine.
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