May 31, 2022
Looking ahead while looking back, the Sweet and the Sour
I am pitting and freezing a few pounds of cherries today, finding a peaceful rhythm as I halve them with a little paring knife and slide out the pits with my thumb. It is a task filled with memories for me. The memory of blue skies and cheery cherry summers. The memory of my mother showing me how to use the knife. The memories of baking clafoutis with my sister.
I pop a cherry half into my mouth. “Do not muzzle the ox,”
my grandma would quote, “while he’s treading out the grain.” This principle I
learned from her as a child (given three times in the Bible) reminds
me I am worthy of my wages. Today, the wages
include a cherry or two.
Instantly, the taste transports me back to my grandfather’s
orchard and stuffed plastic bags of fruit sitting on the kitchen table. I remember eating Rainiers the most, not the deep red cherries
pictured in storybooks. Rainiers are a hybrid from the 1950s, a surprising
blend of two red cherries that then became golden fruits with a little blush.
They are large and sweet; in fact, they are so sweet that we sometimes only got
the leftovers. My mother would show me the peck marks and
remind me that the birds take their bites from the most delicious ones.
As an adult now, buying store-bought cherries, I’m constantly chasing
that elusive sweetness.
All of this is especially nostalgic and poignant today as my
grandmother has been admitted to the hospital. Before leaving, she told me that she is nearly one hundred years old and these things are to be expected.
Yet, it is still painful.
Whether at the hospital or at home, I know her eventual departure from this earth will be right
and in its perfect time. I know she will go to a much better place where she is perfectly loved, perfectly safe, perfectly filled with wonder and joy, and where she feels young and strong again. For some time now, she has said
that she doesn’t recognize herself in the mirror—that an old woman stands in
place of the girl she is inside. She acutely misses my grandfather, the pastor and cherry grower. They were happily married almost fifty years, and now he
has been gone for thirty-three. My husband often asks her if he can get her anything: food, drink, something from the store. Her response is usually the same, often delivered with a
laugh but sometimes with sadness or frustration. “A new body,” she says.
It is a reminder that the words of the Scriptures are really true: “And not only the creation, but we
ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait
eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” (Romans 8:23, ESV)
She is, every day, growing closer to the day of her redemption. That is a
wonderful thing for her, a thing for which her body itself seems to be groaning.
For those of us who remain, however, it is bittersweet. While I measure and bag delicious fruit, placing it in my freezer for an unknown day still ahead, part of me longs for the way I think it should be. I still miss the sweetness of orchard cherries, childhood innocence, the laughter of my grandparents and being surrounded in those moments by my family’s love and care. I still chase the rich, deep flavors that are lacking in the imperfect, mass-produced grocery store produce that the birds haven’t even pecked at yet. I have moments of wishing it could all go back to the way it was. Yet the delicious glimpses within the wages I've already sampled tell me that when these cherries I'm preparing are poured on top of ice cream, baked into a pie or launched into whatever future awaits them, they will be spectacular. I can trust that. I can also trust that when my beautiful grandmother, with her beautiful heart, finally reaches glory, that will be spectacular, too
Beautiful!
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