We picked the blueberries
We picked the blueberries. I spread them on a cookie sheet to freeze. I bagged them up after measuring them, writing on the soft plastic baggie with the sharp smelling permanent marker. I stacked them and put them back into the freezer. Blueberries saved for a winter still to come. I baked them into two cakes dense with eggs and sugar and butter and took them to the potluck where the mothers grumbled and mused on this cultural phenomenon of being the default parents. the father who is the police officer said they searched down to the interstate but they have not caught the man who, hiding off the trail above Lake Padden, the place I walked, while contractions rippled through my body, the day my daughter was born, the place I walked alone, the day before my son was born, waited until he saw a woman and then he attacked her, brutally beating her, could have killed her with his long heavy piece of pipe had the runners for the saturday morning race not heard her screams and ran to her attention-that man is still out there hating women… but what could anyone have done for these men who hate women/what is anyone doing? I stripped my clothes off and hung them on the pegs in the changing room, took my little towel for my sweat and placed it on the top level in the cedar lined sauna with the other mothers- our heavy breasts and soft bellies. The young daughters find us open the heavy wood door and let in a wave of cold night air- "close the door!” our time never not interrupted by someone needing something. I sweat and sweaet and sweat. Go out on the deck and shower off in the cold stream of the well fed shower. Cedar trees all around. For days after my three year old daughter asks “Why you stay in the sauna so long?” “Because it feels good. Because I like to be naked. Because it feels good to sweat.” Because for 60 minutes no one can touch me.