I’m trying to start this piece with conflict. Specifically, I’d like to describe a scene with my two daughters and I fighting as we made our way to the blueberry patch; the activity my friend Cara and I planned for the day. I want to describe the fighting because I know it happened, as it does every day. The problem is I can’t remember what the girls and I were fighting about. It could’ve had to do with Hadley and Harper not picking up their toys when I asked them to. Or maybe it was that one of them refused to throw her pajamas in the laundry basket. Maybe one of them wanted to bring something along and I said she couldn’t so we fought about that.
I know for a fact the three of us fought, because I remember feeling frazzled and shaken over how easy it is for me to go from zero to screaming in three seconds. I remember as we drove down the road that took us to the orchard, that I wanted to start the day over. As the sun blared on my left arm heating it up even though the windows were shut and the A/C was blasting, I remember going over the morning’s events (whatever they were) and trying to figure out how I could have done things differently. I remember crossing my right arm over my left, squeezing my shoulder, and feeling the warmth of my skin from the sun. How strange, I thought, that one part of my body could be freezing and the other almost dripping with sweat. I can remember all this as the girls and I drove down the road to the orchard but I don’t know what it was that we argued about.
We turned off the paved road onto a gravelly dirt one and I felt the shade of the oak trees, their thick green leaves heavy and dripping with fresh air that made me slow down my breathing. “This is beautiful,” I said and the girls agreed. “This road is so twisty, Mama,” Hadley said. “It’s fun!”
“What’s this place called again?” Harper asked.
“Butler’s Orchard,” I told her.
“BUT-ler’s Orchard?” Harper giggled, and then repeated, “BUT-ler’s?”
Hadley snickered and I did, too. I’m a sucker for a butt joke and honestly was delighted that my four year-old made a play on words.
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