ingrid

It’s good to remember that for as many times as everything goes wrong and the day is a total mess, sometimes everything goes wrong and the world is unperturbedly perfect.

We decided to go berry picking on Sunday.  I had been out there earlier in the week and had affirmed that there were still berries to be found.  I was sure that there would be even more by the weekend as all the red marionberries would have ripened up.  Wrong.  We got out there and the fields were picked clean.  I had never really contemplated the phrase “slim pickings”, but that is what we found row after row after row.

You had to keep moving to find the smallest marionberry.  You also had to look all the difficult places—underneath, behind big thorns, down low on the ground.  In short, it sucked.

But still it was beautiful.  The farm was empty.  The island (Sauvie) was quiet.  The sun was preparing to tip over the edge of the earth, the birds were swooping through the air, and there was a sweet and light breeze making everything young and fresh.  Not many berries, but it sure was great being out there.

The kids got tired of picking fairly quickly so I sent them off down a row to a field beyond.  Inez toddled after them for all she was worth.  They found a barkdust pile and some ripe blueberries and were happy.  Brad and I could pick and chat quietly and we were happy.

This is of course when disaster struck.  Now that I think about it, it looks like the first stages of disaster are captured in this photo!  Inez decided to take off her diaper which was dirty.  Not being able to remove her overalls properly in order to escape the diaper, she manages to wrap clothing and diaper and sandal up in a horrible net of shit.  And then she stepped in it.  It is what our family likes to call a “shitastrophe”.  The older kids started screaming.  I come running (although slowly, I admit).  We didn’t bring any diapers with us as we like to live on the edge.

I try to extract the child from her excrement and then try to wash her up by dumping full water bottles over her backside.  Unfortunately for her they were ice water.  (That’ll teach her to excrete!).  I put her shirt back on her, wash up my hands over and over again, and get back to berry picking.  The kids amuse themselves throwing barkdust and flowers at us.  We tolerate it reasonably well.

After we quit tolerating it and both yell at them for throwing bark in the berries, they run off out of view to the next field and Brad and I consider chucking it in.  We have a pants-less baby, a nasty diaper, poor picking conditions, and questionably clean hands.  I call for the older kids.  No kids.  I call again.  Nope.  I decide that I need to go find them.  After wandering across a field of blueberries, I see a side field that looks promising.  Francis and Zephyr are standing in it, shoveling handfuls of thornless blackberries into their mouths.  The field is SO AMAZINGLY FULL OF BERRIES.  There are tons.  I send Francis back to fetch Brad and in the next 20 minutes we pick more than we had picked in the previous hour.  We fill bucket after bucket after bucket.  It is awesome.

Back at the farm stand, we pay for our berries, use soap and hot water on our hands, and improvise a diaper out of a sunhat and a clean onesie.  (Luckily we do find a clean diaper wrap in the car, and when you have one of those, you can shove just about anything in it and make it work.  Once at a movie, I removed my camisole from under my sweater and crammed that into a diaper wrap to get the kid through the next hour.)

Sometimes the world is great.  We’re dirty, we’re tired, but we have plenty berries, plenty joy.

In: family, food, My super freakin' cute kids | | #