"MAGIC" MOMENT # 2: FIRST DAY of FALL

So I decide to take the boys on this, the first day of Fall, on a field trip to the apple orchards of Oak Glen.  Temperature: 85 degrees Fahrenheit.  Car: Honda Pilot.  Car Music: The Beach Boys (of course). Goal: WE WILL HAVE FUN!

We drive out of the city, to the mountains.  Such a gorgeous day.

 We arrive at Riley's Farm a little after noon.  I reminisce to the boys: "12 years ago, at this very farm, your dad (the Knight) and I came and picked raspberries.  It was one of the best days of my life and we are going to do the very same thing."

The Horseman sets up the picnic blanket.  Me: "This grass is the same grass dad and  I sat after picking raspberries."  Boys: "I need a drink / There's bugs / Can I go to the restroom?"  I tell myself: I WILL HAVE FUN!

We sit down and eat the lovely picnic lunch I had prepared.  My big guy finishes in ten seconds flat. "Can we go home now?" he asks.

"But we've come to pick raspberries," I say.  "And apples," he responds.  "Yes, yes and apples."  WE MIGHT HAVE FUN!

And we start pickin'.  Me: "These are the same raspberries Dad and I picked!"

but...

the Big Guy gets "bored."

The Horseman mysteriously disappears.

They're dropping like flies, but Soda, he's into it.  It's just he and I picking raspberries.  Me lifting the branches: "Soda, look, the mother lode!"  and him eager to pick the dark pink ones, the "squishy" ones going into his mouth.  We are having fun.  Better than that, we are making a memory together.  One now that he'll never forget. Me: are we having fun yet?

 

I start to relax.  The bigger boys are fine traipsing through the fenced-in orchards.  "Everyone has fun in their own way," I tell myself.  A little country experience for my city boys.  Fresh air, stretched out blue skies over the chaparral and oak hills. Seeing where their fruit comes from and in what season. They are learning just by being here, I tell myself.  They are making their own memories, too.

A breeze rustles up the vines and I look around as everything blurs in the breeze.  In the enchantment of the moment my mind goes back to over a decade ago when I was picking raspberries with my soon to be Knight, the thrill of knowing he was watching me, but pretending not to notice, the care-free freedom of being up there with him, before responsibility, before diapers and pee in gatorade bottles, before the permanent dark circles under my eyes...

"WWWAAAAHHHHHH (breathes) WWWAAAAHHHHHH"

This is Horseman crying at the top of his lungs from somewhere yonder in the orchard.  "A bee stung my eye, a bee stung my eye, a bee stung my eye..."  This is why I have permanent dark circles under my eyes.  I calm him down and say, "Let's try to have fun..."

He remedies the situation.

A bee had not really stung his eye.

But he feels more comfortable in the midst of all that wild with a buffer.  Between his eyes and the wild.

 

After two and half hours in the orchards, we've picked two cartons full of raspberries and a large bag of gala and senshu apples, had a picnic visited the restroom three times and had an incident with a bee. Did we have fun?   The Big Guy is already in the car, seat belt on, ready to go.  "Yeah Mom," he says in between mouthfuls of raspberries. ""We had fun, let's go home now."