I grew up with a giant patch of wild raspberries. I would duck beneath a bow of leaves and thorns, and my backyard would disappear. Instantly I was transported into a forest of rubies. They hung heavy from the branches, and the brambles were so dense that birds could not penetrate the understory. I remember many mornings sitting on the ground, filling my mouth with the tart and sweet magic, getting mauled by mosquitoes but not caring, as the berries were just once a summer and sometimes in early fall, and their taste was unrivaled.
I left the house this afternoon for the first time in several days. Life has been like that lately – I turn around and am unsure of where I am in time. I’ve been hiding a bit, hesitant, and aware that my head feels thick and slow and that it’s been a challenge to keep up with conversations. We have been in survival mode for over a year. Now that some of the restraints have been lifted, it’s been hard to know what to do, think, and how to feel.
A raspberry patch is in a school garden across the street from my house. I began caring for it during the pandemic. It was overgrown with trees and weeds, and I spent hours working the soil and protecting seedlings from hungry birds and squirrels. Someone had planted raspberry canes. I trimmed them dutifully for three years, confining them to one raised bed.
I couldn’t bring myself to grow or care for anything this year. Spring came and went, and I did not turn the soil in my backyard for peas and tomatoes. I didn’t touch the school garden. I couldn’t deal with the idea of having to help something survive, probably because every fiber of my being was dedicated to ensuring that my oldest child remained on this earth. My survival, in so many ways, depended on his.
My oldest loved raspberries since the moment he began eating solid foods. He is the first one by my side when we gather blackberries in Vermont or strawberries at a local farm. The past few summers, I’ve gone out early to pick the school raspberries, then left a bowl for him on the kitchen counter. Even at eleven and twelve years old, he’d put the berries on his fingertips to eat them, and each time he went through the process, my heart would melt. Every so often, I’d have a dream where he and I were crouched beneath the brambles collecting the red fruits in our cupped hands, his blond curls glinting in the filtered sunlight. I am used to him by my side each summer, picking those berries. But this summer, he’s not.
This afternoon I slipped on my clogs and shuffled over to the raspberry patch with a bowl in my hands. I started at the base of the thicket, picking, moving up to the top methodically. I stepped into the thorns, searching for the fruits hidden beneath. There’s an art to picking berries. You look at the color first, then gently wrap your fingers around the fruit. If it slides off the branch without effort, it’s ready. Any tugging and it’s not ripe enough.
As I picked, I thought about my son. I thought about how difficult it is as a parent to reconcile the concept that you cannot fix everything, that sometimes, despite all your efforts and love, you are not enough – and that not being enough is okay, even though it hurts like a million daggers tearing apart your heart. I thought about how much I miss him even though it’s only been three days. I heard his voice as a baby and his sounds as a teenager. I smelled his hair. I felt his warm hand in mine.
I put a perfect red raspberry in my mouth and let it melt. I felt the taste hit my senses, the tart at my cheeks, the sweetness beneath my tongue. My eyes teared as I imagined myself as a child beneath the brambles, then my son, our voices hushed, our fingers stained. I thought about how I’d encouraged him to visit the patch a week ago and that he’d declined, withdrawn and sad, ready to move on to whatever the future was, toward the uncertainty. I remembered how much my heart hurt when he said no to joining me, that sense of loss, not just for that moment but for all the struggles and heartaches of our recent past.
There’s a bowl of raspberries on my kitchen counter. I’d like to say that they are waiting for my oldest son, but I know that they are not. He is in California, and I am in New Jersey. He is receiving the help that I could not provide. He is not eating these raspberries, but I am. One by one, I put them in my mouth and close my eyes. I feel the taste spread like the beauty of memory sprawling throughout my consciousness. I take in the flavor and all of the wonder that flows from it and think of my child, and know that, at some point, it will be okay.
object of memory 