How to Pit Soft Cherries by K.L.Kivi

There is a tree by the side of the road. Every year around this time, I climb it. From the rocky bank, I put my foot up onto its curving, fat trunk and hoist myself up. There are two trunks actually, each as grey and thick as an elephant’s leg. But what do I know of elephants? This tree is like my elephant, a large, steady ear-flapping pachyderm that offers up its back to give me a ride again and again.

Up the tree I climb, straddling the large gaps between the steps in its branches, moving between the trunks until they are too far apart to bridge. Up I go even further, pulling myself up onto the soft springy branches thinner than my wrist. There, I find the small, burgundy black globes of sweetness hanging among the eye-shaped leaves: cherries.

Tonight, as I climbed and reached and picked into the bucket hung from my waist by a leather belt, I said to my friends: I come here as much to climb this tree as I do to pick cherries. Don’t get me wrong - I love the cherries. Every year, I pick honey buckets full of them, rendering them into clafoutis, jams and just plain canned cherries. These are not the firm, large cherries one buys in stores and snacks on like bonbons. This variety, whose name I do not know, it is not one that lends itself to storage or transport. Very quickly, these soft pungently sweet cherries will turn to brown mush. The trick is to act quickly.

I set my two buckets on the fridge in the basement where it is cooler than my house on this hot July night. In the morning, I will begin the process. Some I will can whole, cherries packed into quart jars, covered with boiling water, lidded and processed in a hot canning bath. These I will take to gatherings in the winter, where my friends will sit around eating summer sunlight one red droplet at a time, carefully spitting the pits into a communal spittoon-bowl. We will talk of summer. We will feel warm. I will be in my tree again.

(You could say, that whenever I am not in this tree, I am out of my tree. I once read a very smart response to the accusation, “you’re out of your tree!” “It’s not my tree,” the person replied.)

Another portion of the cherries, I will pit and freeze, and others yet, I will pit and turn into cherry jam. Once the raspberries and Saskatoon berries are ready, I will combine the three to make a concoction that is food and delight and nourishment all in one. You need a cherry pitter, friends have said to me. What do I need another gadget for? Tomorrow morning I will fire up the best, most efficient cherry pitter in the world: my lips. Yes, it is true! With these soft cherries, it is possible to suck the pit out of them and leave all of the flesh and most of the juice behind. Of course, some juice will splatter on the wall behind the sink and another quantity will stream down the outsides of my arms and drip off my elbows, but there’s enough juice in these gems for all that and the jar.

And thus, my love affair with the tree will continue as I place my puckered lips on each cherry, lovingly extracting their pits. Kissing. That’s what I do. Let it be known: I’m an unrepentant cherry kisser.

I kiss many cherries, maybe twenty or thirty, before I spit out a mouthful of the hard seeds. And then I kiss some more. The cherries go into a pie shell to await custard or into the pot to await jamification. I kiss until my lips and chin and cheeks and clothes are smeared with indelible red. I kiss until I burp up red bubbles. And then I kiss some more. At some point, I run out of cherries. Sated for this year, I go up to the garden. The raspberries will be ripe in another week!