Cherry Wine and Fatso Laird

The cherry tree had ripened fruit - not as much as last year, but fruit none-the-less.

Alisdair decided he wanted to make some cherry jelly, using Granny Trudy's recipe and so he began to pick the fruit into a big stainless steel bowl. Isobel saw him doing this and wanted to help. An argument ensued and Isobel was clearly upset by it. She left and went to do something else. Shortly afterwards, Alisdair lost interest in picking cherries and left the bowl on the back step.

John had a fire burning and I joined him in a plastic lawnchair near the fire pit. Isobel was hovering around until John told her to go pick some fresh peas from the garden and told her she could eat the contents of a few pods.

She ran off, into the yard next door. All was quiet for a while -- too quiet for too long... and then suddenly Isobel ran past us, her hands covered in a blood red substance. For a moment I thought it WAS blood. And then the penny dropped... she'd gotten into the bowl of cherries.

I went to check and, sure enough, the unwashed cherries had been turned into what looked like cherry wine. Squished and fermenting in the bowl with bugs flying around the dish. Fit only for the compost bin.

I was angry and went in search of the culprit. She was nowhere to be found. I told John what had happened.

He thought for a moment and then he said something very cryptic and yet very wise, "That sounds like something Fatso Laird's friend would do!" And then he reminded me that there were still other cherries on the tree and we could still pick some of them and probably we would still have enough to make jelly.

I knew he was right about Fatso Laird and her friend. And so I went to find Isobel, who reappeared once she realized my anger had waned, and I proceeded to wash her sticky hands.

As I washed Isobel's tiny palms I wondered about Mrs. Laird. Was she still alive? Did she still remember the young girl who got angry at her, one day when Mrs. Laird was volunteering at her son's school, and wrote "Fatso Laird" on a piece of masking tape and stuck it on her bottom? And now, as a woman of 48 -- far removed from the girl in Grade 5 or 6, who had done the deed -- I wondered what I would do if some mischievous kid did the same thing to me??

At the time of the incident, my parents made me apologize to Mrs. Laird -- but I wasn't truly sorry. It was only a ritual of obedience. But when I saw the squished cherries and the angry little girl lashing out,I fully understood. Later, John and I laughed about the fact that Isobel was "so much like her Mother" -- but deep down sometimes I still feel the need to truly apologize to Mrs. Laird (if I ever track her down) -- for my transgression almost 40 years ago. Now I am both the angry little girl -- and Mrs. Laird herself -- all wrapped up into the same person...."Fatso Laird's" secret friend....