Cherry trees taught me enormous life lessons. When I was eight years old, Mom gave me the job of selling cherries from our fifteen trees to earn money for all my personal expenses: Girl Scout activities and camp, school supplies and field trips, dance classes, private music instruction, comic books or candy from the mom-and-pop corner store. I felt proud that I could pay my own way. Mom told me I was “extra mature,” compared to my friends, and I naively believed her.
In reality, at that age, weighing the cherries and figuring their cost, then making correct change challenged me. There must have been as many customers who helped me as took advantage because, by the end of summer, I always had enough money to meet my goals – all except the private music teacher, who was way too expensive. Although I felt sad that I couldn’t have help with my violin, I counted myself lucky that I fulfilled the rest of my budget.
I loved running the business. Regular customers returned each year for our regional specialty: bright red sour pie cherries that thrived in north Seattle but weren’t sold in stores. In the spring, I pruned away the tent caterpillars who planned to eat the cherries instead of us. Each July, I scampered up to the top of every tree to test the cherries’ ripeness. Once I proclaimed them ready to sell, the hardest job faced me: finding the two five-foot-by-five-foot double plywood signboards that lay buried somewhere in the garage. They were far too heavy for me to lift. I found neighborhood friends who helped me drag them down the 100-foot driveway and prop them up, making a triangle from the two pieces of wood with the hand painted message: CHERRIES U PICK 10 ¢/lb. Underneath that, it said: I PICK 15 ¢/lb. I was in business.
Customers quickly arrived. I provided ladders and “buckets” (old coffee tins with coat hanger handles) and told them where the fruit was the ripest. High in the trees, I picked along with them, earning an impressive (to me) 15 cents per pound. The cherry business kept me busy all during July and August. I loved it.
Many decades later, my pride at being self-supporting has not left me. Through the cherries, I developed a “can-do” attitude, designing ways to overcome obstacles, an ability that still serves me today. I became accustomed to creating and following a budget, a life-long habit. I was especially attuned to nature’s cycles and learned to cooperate with them, to care for and love the natural world, another value I hold dearly today. Thank you, cherries.
After I finished college, I grieved when the cherry trees, one at a time, died of old age. Two decades later, when my mother passed away, I planted cherry trees in memory of her and the independence she gave me. Gazing at those trees today, I remember, in gratitude, all the valuable lessons the old orchard taught me.
