JudyOldPictures

Old Pictures. Those were happy years. I have a picture of me in my wild haired hippie stage standing in the middle of a frost-killed tomato field, acres and acres of lake front, flat land, dressed in old jeans and a navy pea coat, my hair streamed out in a fuzz halo fourteen inches long. I was gleaning tomatoes after the farmer had harvested. The day was steel gray and the field was also gray. I look every bit of a gypsy woman traveling through a dark land, standing and smiling at the camera while eating a tomato. It's probably my favorite picture, and I have no idea what brought it to mind. Probably thinking about the happy child rearing years, I guess, because my kids and I gleaned fields around the area for tomatoes, potatoes and apples. I was proud and poor and wouldn't let my parents help me through the very lean years after my divorce and midwifing didn't pay the bills because so many families that hire a home birth midwife had less cash...but we all had more resources than the average.

My house got painted, and wood got delivered. I have an heirloom diamond pin and a mink coat, ratty but cool! and a wonderful squeaky antique rocking chair that can get any fussy baby calmed down with the rhythm of rock-squeak, rock-squeak, all from grateful client-parents. (And many other interesting treasures!)

And every year I froze a freezer full of cider made from myriad kinds of gleaned apples. My favorite source for apples was an overgrown orchard owned by a convent of nuns who would peek out of the windows of their fortress and watch me and the kids,G. in a football helmet to protect his head while he shook the trunk of those old trees, gather up the windfalls and load them into cardboard boxes in the back of a borrowed truck. We drove to the cider mill to have the apples pressed into rinsed out milk jugs. That cider was unbelievable. I left a fair share for the nuns on the stone patio outside their door and rang their summoning bell and left. They are cloistered and silent.

Pictures.

Wonderful images that I can relate to so well. I gleaned sour cherries from an abandoned orchard and froze them for pies. I can feel the tart flavor still.

Thank you for your comment. JD

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