Undaunted Joy #88 Guest Hallie Waugh

In a Bowl of Cherries

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Every once in a while, I like to feature a guest post. It is good to look at joy from a different view than just mine.

This week Undaunted Joy features writer, Hallie Waugh. I met Hallie at our MFA program at Seattle Pacific. She was a year ahead of me in the program and the welcome wagon for all us newbies. Hallie exudes hospitality and kindness. There have been times in the last few years, when she has reached out to me in a moment where I really needed some tenderness and it is only Providential that she could have known. I am delighted to share this tender vignette described with a poet’s eye.

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In a small suburban town in Ohio, my great aunt and uncle spent decades of their lives together in a three-story craftsman-style home. Even now, years after my Aunt Phyllis has passed, Uncle Jack remains in the home, whose porch is as big as a living room and whose nooks and crannies I explored voraciously as a child. I remember their garden out back, where he grew green beans. It sprawled out and down the hill, past the detached garage. 

When I remember the summer afternoons I spent there, a single memory comes to me fully intact. I am sitting with my cousin on a side porch off the lowered sunroom; we can see the tomato cages climbing toward the sky in rows. We are reclining, our feet tucked beneath us. She is the only cousin exactly my age, born one month before I was. I see her only once or twice a year.

This cousin died at age 23, and so this is one of a handful of memories I have of her. The ones I do have are sporadic, sprinkled across family reunions and vacations, and confirmed by home videos and family stories. The picture they paint is something like this: two girls, one with dark curly hair and the other with wispy white locks, always up to something and giggling away. 

But the memory I have of this day on the side porch is mine alone. It has no place in the photo albums; I doubt anyone remembers it but me. We were there together, and maybe we talked, and maybe we didn’t. But perhaps as the conversation lulled, or while we gabbed about a new song we liked, Aunt Phyllis came out bearing a porcelain bowl piled with rainier cherries, plump mounds of yellow and red. She set the bowl on the table between us along with a smaller bowl for the pits and stems. 

I’d never had anything but a maraschino up until then, and I hated them. If I ever got a sundae with a syrupy red cherry on top, I’d quickly pass it to my dad and scrape the syrup remains from the top. I didn’t know cherries could have pits, or that they came in variegated colors. I didn’t know they could taste as juicy and tart as a peach. 

These cherries sat between us like a beloved thing, like a secret. We passed the hours before dinner that way, placing the swollen cherries between our teeth. We’d pull the stems until they gave. Then we’d bite through the skin into the meat, our teeth sliding around the pits. When we’d sucked all the juicy pith from the stone, we’d spit them into the small white bowl. 

At one point, Aunt Phyllis came back out and asked if we’d like more. “You girls love these cherries, don’t you?” she said, a smile in her voice, as if to say keep eating. Keep this delicious joy between you.

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Hallie Waugh writes meditative poetry and nonfiction about the intersection of spirituality and embodiment. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Seattle Pacific University, and her poetry and essays have been published with or are forthcoming from New York Quarterly, Windhover, Fathom, Ekstasis, and more. You can sign up for her monthly newsletter, Weekend Exhale, here, or follow her on Instagram @halliewaugh_writer.

If you would like to write a guest post, send me your submission. Perhaps we can find a home for it! With over 1200 subscribers, I’d love to use this Substack to share other joyful voice.