They mowed down the blackberry shrubs on the side of Flamingo Drive last fall. Severely. I’m thinking they will grow back and still be filled with big juicy abundant berries in the summer. They must be thinking this, too. The ones who come and mow them down.
What a nuisance they seem to be. According to the general public on Vancouver Island. ‘They grow like weeds!’ ‘They ARE a weed! You know that, don’t you?’ ‘See that? That’s the start of a blackberry coming up! You’d better dig that out! It’ll take over your yard and you’ll never get it out!’ ‘Blackberries, a nightmare!’ A nightmare? I think I’m living the dream; remembering those blissful berries from last year. Straight off the vine…nutrients and antioxidants! Packing their powerful punch in 2 secs flat from pick to lips to hips! To have this wild wonder still hanging around in our moderned-down town? What have we done to deserve this?!
On my neighbourhood walk, I see 2 men walking talking together. One points into the forested bush line. ‘Here, I’ll put the driveway.’ They walk a short distance more on the stretch of road. ‘Here. I’ll clear this area’. ‘Good idea,’ says the other guy. ‘And the blackberries?’ ‘Yes, those will go.’ I gasp. But no one hears me. It is just a cry inside.
Winter comes and everything stays still. I love winter.
Spring arrives. There are 2 new houses being built on the corner hill. A man I once thought thoughtful brings a riding mower to the site one day. He mows the stand of blackberries down that crown the ditch. All along one side, to the corner, then down to the next lot, along the other side. L-shaped, like the L in Loveless. People say, ‘Nothing kills them. They just keep coming up.’ But they are wrong. They are gone.
Daffodils came and went. Summer bloomed. Roses sang their soft, their sultry, tunes. Romantic, they are. Like movie stars they come out in colourful display, while remaining tempermentally prickly.
People screamed and shouted. The way they do all summer long at the beach, on the ocean shore. They frequently footed the road by our home in groups and drove their cars like mad. Partied. Swam. Music-ed. I did some of that, too. Except the outside music.
There’s a song that plays all along on the right side of my head. It bends my heart with its rhythm and soothes crass outside brash to harmony. I wish we’d all listen to that original song, the Aum that vibrates into the world. But people play their ‘music’ too loud to hear the Big Guy In the Sky playing His cello, that deep bass reverberating, inside and out, on heaven and earth.
Summer blazed on. There was heat and smoke with no fire, ‘cept the sun. We nearly came undone from hand watering the garden and trees, though Romeo did most of the heavy lifting. They were troopers, him and the plants, standing their ground, but still I could hear them whisper whimper with near asphixiation, intoxification. Global warming swarming. ‘Let there be a reprieve, for all your children, birds and bees’, I asked, while Someone listened. No response. The summer season seemed to last all year with all the jeering and cheering, though it was me who was doing the rain dance on the patio amongst the scorched dry grasses. It came at last…
BUT NOT BEFORE THE BLACKBERRIES RIPENED! They hung like butlers, serving themselves up on a platter. Then, BEWARE…I saw them come…
One by one, then many, here and there, till everywhere I looked, they picked. A middle-aged guy stayed in his car with the radio playing, driving up the road and down again, while his young kids stood by the blackberry bushes. That’s what they seemed to be doing. Then I saw them, picking. Barely. Just one. Walk. Another. Turn around. Walk back to where they were. They had no idea. No instruction. They liked them, but not too much.
I reminisced. Decorated with an ice cream pail around my neck, an old shoelace tied to its handle. My sisters all the same. Some with large cottage cheese containers. We would head out early in the morning, just after dawn. Return home in the dark of night, leaving the bush at dusk, only when it was impossible to see anymore. Except for my mother. She could see in the dark…while we waited in the car for her. Even though she was blind in one eye since birth. The berries were perfect. They weren’t blackberries. It wasn’t Vancouver Island. But a beautiful prairie place in the wild bush where raspberries grew, saskatoons, pincherries. There was discipline. There were rules. There was grace. A berry was picked with the thumb, index and middle fingers gently formed together. GENTLY!, I say. Never, NEVER! was a stem broken, a leaf trashed, a berry dropped, a berry smashed. Artful. Once, my mother, leaning gently! against a branch, heard it crack. She stumbled back. We silently gasped. Wide-eyed. She almost cried. Not for herself, but for that tree. Gosh! If that branch had broken! We’d not be forgiven. How could we be entitled to pick berries when we had done such a deed! So…carefully. Angels in nature’s church.
Down our road, a grandma filled her picking pail. Beside her was her grandson. With his stick he swung at it, beating bramble like a rambling brat. ‘Take this! Take that!’ The grandma smiled at me as we passed by and I watched him gash the branches as they broke.
The patch on McFeely Drive became trailed by feet making paths for deeper entry. A woman with dyed hair stopped by, as we walked, and said, ‘Be careful of the ants. They bite you when you pick the berries.’ Romeo stepped inside a manmade trail and picked only a moment till the ants bit his fingers. Some things people tell you are true.
A frowning woman picked alongside Kinkade Road. She looked up at me with a nervous glance and a knife in her hand exclaiming, ‘These buggers hurt!’ ‘They have thorns for a reason’, I offered. She tilted her head, paused slightly, and mouthed a half smile. I thought it was a smile…
I felt their pain as mine. They just kept giving. I started to give thanks to the ones I ate. They kept their sweet taste, even with all the bitterness.
On the last day before the rain, I witnessed a hatted woman, peeping out from under her saggy brim, with large hand cutters in her palm, murdering her way through the bramble. Repulsed, she averted her prey’s protective skin. A dismembered heap lay at her feet. With the look on her face I wondered how black n’ blue berries would taste with such scowl? Foul!
I howled! ‘It’s a damn shame! Sheer disgrace! Life’s gone to waste!’
Where Have All The Good People Gone?! Someone yearning wrote that song. I was yearning all summer long.
Then raindrops came. And they were gone. Back to hiding in their hideouts. Smashing berries into jam!
The ‘music’ died. They left, taking summer with them. Aretha Franklin left in the summer, too. Is she hearing heaven’s song? I hope she gets what she wants! I hope she gets what she deserves! Frankly, even if she isn’t singing…I’m still playing her song.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Find out what it means…
Love,
Juliet