Blackberries

My years as an English major did not prepare me for this. I prided myself on my ability to see ambiguity and to keep my mind open to new ideas. I expected that I would have to re-examine old beliefs. I knew my assumptions would be challenged. But my world was turned upside-down last weekend when I discovered, for the first time, what a blackberry was. I'm not talking about the electronic organizer, people. I'm talking about the fruit.

Despite living in a city and loving it, I will often go off on rants about how much saner country life is. Traffic is my favorite topic. "I operate on country time, folks! Going ten miles should take me fifteen minutes, max! But here it takes you an hour! Cars everywhere!" I'll also complain vociferously about the price of produce, even though the most exotic thing available to me back home in the country is an avocado. This causes much eye-rolling from whichever poor soul is forced to listen to me. I'm turning into a grandpaw. "Back in the good old days, we didn't have to pay $5.69 for ten measley blueberries! Why, we could go right in our own backyards, and pick strawberries, and blueberries, and raspberries, and blackberries! They tasted better, too."

Turns out, I didn't even know what a blackberry looked like.

For the past twenty-six years of my life, I would battle produce price-gouging with happy memories of myself and my brother picking blackberries. (I edit out the moments when one of us shoves the other into the prickers, of course.) I remember eating blackberries over vanilla ice cream, or using them in a pie, or eating half the bucket before we even got home. The light is always low and golden, I'm always wearing a summer dress, and the birds chirp in chorus.

Ha. Turns out we were picking black raspberries.