Cherry Belly

When my parents came to visit, we decided to go pick cherries. It was the final weekend at a local orchard, and summer was in full swing.

My dad, who was there when we made the plans, but wasn't really paying attention, was dismayed to learn just what we were doing.

"I picked cherries over here in college. And they sorta paid me. You're saying now we are paying to pick cherries?" he asked.

"You'll have fun," my mom assured him.

To which he gave her the side eye.

We drove there, my mom, my dad, my husband, and I, and we met a friend at the orchard, who had picked cherries there on many occasions. We were given some paper bags, and directed to the correct trees, and let loose.

We had Bing and Rainer cherries to select from, and my parents went to work on the Bing trees and my husband, friend, and I got to picking on the Rainer trees.

"If you leave the stem on, they will keep longer," my husband advised.

"But we will pay more for weight we can't eat," I told him.

"We don't need to max out these bags. What are we going to do with a billion pounds of cherries?" he said.

My husband, despite being a trillion times better at math than me, often misuses the word billion and/or million.

"We can freeze them," I said.

Which sent him into a total tailspin about freezer space with hunting season coming on. My mom and I started to laugh, but he informed us, it was no laughing matter.

"You can just do what I do," my friend suggested. "Me and my partner just refer to this day as Cherry Belly Day, and we eat while we pick until we are sick."

My husband agreed, through a mouth of cherries, that this was a good plan.

She told him it was important that when she and her partner did this, they went back to the house with two bathrooms. I informed her my house had doubled in population with my parents there.

"Hmmm, sounds like bad math," she said. "But you probably won't make it back home before someone has to use the bathroom."

Someone brought up pesticides, although it wasn't my dad since he was lagging behind, as he considered every cherry he picked very carefully.

"They don't use them here," my friend said, also through a mouth of cherries. "They use fish emulsion."

Which then brought on a conversation about what fish emulsion even was. My mom was unconvinced she wanted to eat the unwashed cherries, despite it being fish emulsion involved and not traditional pesticide.

Meanwhile, I continued to pick the cherries and shake my bag, making sure I was maximizing how many cherries I fit in the bag. At one point I ran into my husband and saw that while my bag was nearly full, his was half empty. He was still eating cherries.

"What are we even going to do with a million cherries?" He bemoaned again.

I made him switch bags with me and proceeded to fill his.

Once we were done picking, my dad, who had been behind us, still seriously considering his picks, was shocked to learn that the cherries were not coated in traditional fertilizer. We walked back to the table to weigh our haul and pay.

By the table was a pristine port-a-potty.

My husband looked at me and slipped into the port-a-potty. My dad complained that we were paying for cherries we picked.

"This is why I go to the grocery store," my dad said. "To not pick my own fruit. And now I'm picking my own fruit and paying for it?"

"You don't go to grocery stores," my mom said.

The cherries were paid for regardless of my dad's feelings, and husband was still in the bathroom.

"So it begins," my friend said, "the cherry belly."

Then a mother, holding the hand of a small toddler, burst from the cherry trees.

"We are going to the bathroom, honey. Just hold it. We're almost there."

They reached the lone port-a-potty in the canyon. It was locked. Because my husband was in there starting what would be a twenty-four hour fight with what he later admitted to be the "two to three pounds" of cherries he ate while he was supposed to be picking.

So while the mother and toddler did reach the port-a-potty, they did not get to use it as quickly as they hoped.

Turns out, cherry belly waits for no one. And the only way to come out on top is to be the first to the bathroom.

Plan your drive home accordingly.