Mia – Not good I am afraid

Mia has miscarried all her lambs. This is sad for everyone.

When I was a young Mum raising a family alone in New Zealand (we were thin but happy), before I started teaching, I used to pick up odds and sods of jobs here and there. One of them was picking apples while the kids were at school.  Most of you know this. My Mother had died shortly before my marriage broke up and with a tired murmur of protest my life slid from secure to perilous.  For a number of years as the children struggled cheerfully along, so stoic and so supportive, I ran up and down the fence of life very close to despair. We were very poor.

One summer a friend of mine said come and pick apples on my orchard. And I learnt a curious thing when I was picking apples.

I drove a hydra ladder (a little cherry picker) to pick the apples. This is like a long arm on motorised wheels with a cage at the top that you stand in. You drive it with your feet, leaving your hands free to pick.

The man who  taught me to pick the fruit was a gentle older Indian man from Fiji. He had a wife and numerous children at home in Fiji. The Indian people there were not allowed  to buy land. I am not sure if it is the same now. But in those days (not so long ago) many of the men would come away to New Zealand and work in seasonal jobs sending  their pay check home. He worked every daylight hour in the trees.  I am ashamed to say that I have forgotton his name. He was very tall and very quiet and wore the same clothes for an entire season, I ended up working three seasons with him.  He taught me how to pick apples. Well.  He taught me how to pick apples well. What Was his name? I wish I could remember, something like Usher, do you remember Deb?

The first picks of the season were always colour picks. The majority of the fruit was not ready so we only took out the ripe fruit. But we were paid per bin so we had to pick a reasonable amount to get a reasonable pay. Our handsome boss would point us to a row, one long, long row per picker, he would park your bin with your name on it in the middle somewhere, then you drive your hydra ladder into this row and disappear from view into the trees.  The row of trees was very long. Daunting. At the beginning I felt that I would never get to the end.

Usher taught me to focus back on each tree, not the row, to pull the hydra- ladder back as far as you could go (without hitting the tree behind you) and then go up high. Ignore the row and look carefully at one tree at a time. I learnt to do this very fast. Look for the red he would call from his own cage on his own hydra ladder, in his own row.  See the red? Just the bright ones? Now go in and pick only those. So I would see all the apples that were the right bright shade of red then zoom into the tree on my machine, with this picture in my head, this map of red and working my way down I would pick them all, two to a hand the way he showed me and place (not drop) them gently, at speed, into the bag hanging from the bars in front of me.

Now back Usher would call so one pedal forward and one pedal back with my feet, I would run  the machine backwards and upwards at the same time. Look for the next red he would call through the trees.

Ok. I would see twenty or thirty apples that popped anew in the absence of their brighter cousins. Back in I would go and pick those.

Then to the next tree. See the red. Pick those. And on down the row. One tree at a time.

What I learnt was to focus on one level of work at a time. Get this done then the next one will be apparent. Get that one done and then move to the next. Each level is an achievement.  To divide the work up so it was easier to manage. To focus on one red at a time. One tree at a time.

When it became apparent that Mia was losing her lambs, way, way ahead of her time, and that she was in trouble, I had to wash up then reach in and scoop them out from her hot belly one by one. I had never done this before. Helping Mama the other day was one apple compared to this poor sheep. She will survive I think but two of her lambs had been dead a while and there were four altogether. All tiny and all dead. But she was unable to birth them, she had no contractions, just a big mess. This was miserable and horrible work.  And when I am overwhelmed by a task I always go back to the trees and my old teacher and blocking out all the other colours just pick one red at a time. Slow down, narrow your eyes and do the work one at a time. 

Then pull back, look up and across, access your progress,  then go back into the trees.

Good morning. We will have a better day today.

celi