Passion Fruit

Today we made the trek to go visit Honey's recently widowed grandfather and to pick blueberries. Years ago, on their land they had a 'you pick' operation and have forty or so blueberry bushes across the front of their property. Well the 'you pick' has fallen by the wayside and really only the family comes out to relieve these generous botanicals of their luscious fruit. Two kinds of berries are there. The first is bigger than a marble at times and frosty looking on the outside. The second is smaller, shiny. Both are delicious and sweet.

As I was out picking by myself, filling up buckets of food to put away for my family for muffins, pancakes, and jam, I was thinking how gratifying work like this is. The sun and the rain come together through a miracle of evolution and create a perfect food, full of nutrients and antioxidants. Sweet Sugary Sunshine. And while it takes a while for this phenomenon to occur, a year really, pulling deep purple fruit from the tree makes me think of instant gratification. I pop a berry in my mouth. It is warm and sweetness bursts onto my tongue. This is something that humanity has been doing for tens of thousands of years. For me, this picking is a deep and spiritual action, connecting me to mothers and fathers from the beginning of time. And even to other species. Because I am not the only gatherer. There are birds and insects. There is a spider in my bucket. I shoo him away to find his own berries (other than those I have just stolen from him.) Even longer than we have been driving cars or surfing the Internet. Even longer than we have been writing sonnets, or writing anything. Even before language was fully developed. Even longer than these, we have been gathering food from the Earth. The idea of this makes me so thankful to be alive and in this chain of connectedness with the air, the wind, the rain, and the Earth.

Later on, we go in to chat and Poppy pulls out a bunch of old photographs for my sister-in-law and I to pore over while the menfolk play with the babies. I look at the old black and white photographs of my husbands relatives, ancestors if you will, and I see glimpses of him smiling back at me from his mother's school photographs and in the way the his sturdy great-grandfather stands next to his great-grandmother. There are pictures of Poppy and Granny, too. Of them in the full bloom of youth in blue jeans and full skirts. They are almost always outside, as they usually were in all of my interactions with them.

There is one photograph of Poppy in a fitted white tee shirt and bluejeans, with black boots. He is straddling an antique motorcycle with slicked back hair. Strikingly handsome. I understand how Granny fell in love with this younger man. I can see what passion their relationship would have held. I bet their sex life was amazing. And while some people might be turned off by that mental image, I am deeply comforted by it. Here is a man who was loved by a woman. While he is still here and she is gone, I am sure she loved him in every way possible: emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Seeing these images just confirms in my mind how good of a life she had. We are so so so sorry it is past. But I am so glad that she was who she was. That she was on this Earth to taste blueberries, feel the sunshine, and love this man.