Berry Patch Wisdom
My 90-year-old mother and I were reminiscing. As her recollections of recent events become less accurate, her memories of times past sharpened into focus. We discussed her childhood with her 10 siblings, her courtship with my father, my youth, and the experiences of my now grown children during their visits to her home. I realized, as we talked, that my mother’s life could be measured in berry patches.
Growing up in Maple Valley, Washington, she spent her summers outdoors catching frogs, building dams to create swimming holes in a nearby creek, and picking through tangles of blackberry vines for succulent fruit to fill her pail. She never lost her love of picking berries, both wild and “civilized,” and on summer mornings during my childhood we’d head for the U-Pick-Em Berry Patch. We’d kneel side by side in the warm dust gathering strawberries and mother would talk quietly. There were lessons to learn about planning ahead, the value of hard work, and enjoying the fruit of your labors (literally!). When we presented our berries for weighing I smiled innocently at the field owner with juice-stained lips while happily digesting a goodly portion of his profits.
When I was older Mother took me into the woods behind the local cemetery to her favorite patch of wild trailing blackberries. It was hard work. The berries were small and the vines had needle-sharp thorns. Mother protected her hands and arms by cutting finger holes in the toes of old socks then pulled the sock tops up over the cuffs of her flannel shirt. I thought the whole process ridiculous. Blackberries ripened in the August heat. The woods were boring, the work tiring, and the thorns sharp! I wanted to be with my friends swimming at the lake and gossiping about the latest summer romances, not stuck in the woods in a sweaty flannel shirt, picking through berry brambles with my mother. Mother, however, considered it a great time for discussing the value of perseverance, diligence, and how good things come to those who wait. I knew she wasn’t talking about blackberries.
After I married and had children, we lived on a series of military bases, none of which was near a berry patch. I bought my jams and jellies at the commissary and made my pies with fruit from produce stands or the frozen food aisle. But one summer we ended up staying with my parents while my husband attended a Navy training course. On a hot August afternoon my 6-year-old son burst through the back door.
“Gramma, you’ve got tons and tons of berries just growing for free down there by the big trees! Can I have a bucket?” His grin was as purple as his shirt.
“Sure honey,” she replied, throwing me a look of triumph as she took his sticky hand and headed out the door.
It was another opportunity to dispense berry patch wisdom and she wasn’t going to let it pass. In the days that followed, the two of them gathered gallons of blackberries. She made pies and jelly and froze bags and bags of the sun-ripened fruit.
Now, holding hands, we remembered the berry patches of her past. Back then time was measured in quarts and gallons, boxes and flats. How I wish I could return with her to a summer heady with the fragrance of warm berries. I wish I could recall all the things she told me; the things I hadn’t wanted to hear when I was younger and impatient. I regard her white hair, curled so carefully and remember when dark brown tendrils escaped from her cotton bandana, pulled askew by a prickly berry vine.
She looks at me with a twinkle in her eye. “You never did like to pick berries, did you?”
“No,” I admit, feeling a bit chastened even now.
“But you sure liked to eat them!” She laughs out loud and I catch a glimpse of the girl she must have been, chasing frogs and gulping handfuls of sweet wild berries.
Then she’s still again. “A person can learn an awful lot in a berry patch.”
I lay my head on her thin shoulder and sigh, “I know, mama. I know.”