A Path for Precious Memories

A Path for Precious Memories

The old writing desk sat indecorously close to the wall in the garret of the old house on an old street in an old town. This haphazard arrangement positioned the desk so that, when I sat here to write, I could look out over an old rose garden. In the spring, the old garden was full of wild flowers and ever present morning glory vines. There did appear to be an attempt, long ago, to create flower beds and order, but the overgrown yard and the old house had been left alone for many years. The carefully ordered flower beds had almost disappeared into the multicolored jungle. In amongst the chaotic growth were tall saskatoon bushes, remnants of a long ago attempt to transplant something of the prairies to an island far from prairie community pastures.  

It was in such community pastures that families tumbled out of cars or trucks to get each year's delicious fruit destined for wonderful pies, jam, syrup and the freezer. Big plastic ice cream pails and anything else with a handle that would hold berries came from the trunks of cars. The smallest bucket went to the smallest child. Some adults would only use specific pails bragging that they had ‘used that pail for the last ten years’ and ‘if I don’t use that pail, I don’t find that many berries’. Others made sure the little ones had containers with good handles. Having good handles prevented many of the berries, those that escaped hungry little mouths, from being spilled into the tall grass and lost to all but the ants and little burrowing things always grateful for the bounty. A good stout handle also avoided the tears that came when all that work, hard for a little boy or girl when it was so hot, tumbled mercilessly into the grass. Or worse yet, into a fresh cow patty!

Wrapping that memory in tissue paper and setting it in a safe place, I found one lonely ice cream pail in the mud room of this old house and set out to my back yard to find enough of the sweet purple berries for a pie. When I returned to the kitchen, I found not only enough for a pie, but a small bit that just filled a china fruit nappy. Setting the fruit nappy with its treasure in the freezer, I slipped back into a memory of winter tastes from that young time. Busying myself with other tasks while they froze, I started making a delicious saskatoon pie. The few berries froze quickly, and pouring milk over the berries, they iced all around giving me little individual treats full of sweet purple juice turning the milk mauve. Dusting my icy gems with a bit of sugar, not nearly as much as when I was ten,the sweet milky snack awaited.  Ice melted as the warmth of my tongue rolled each one around seeking the edge of the skin, teeth bit into the soft inner flesh.  Taste and texture of the prairies filled me with wide skies and hot dusty summer heat.

“Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.”

~ L.M.Montgomery, The Story Girl