Remember Me When This You See: Part 1: BLACKBERRY MEMORIES

Dear Diana,

I found a patch of wild blackberries just up the road this morning and picked three baskets full to make into jam. They're the last I’ll find this year. The raccoons have been making regular inroads on the vines I planted when I moved in, but they’d missed these. It might be because the dogs like to ramble up that way at night. Though, in truth, the raccoons around here don’t seem to have any fear of my hounds. More likely, it’s because they were half hidden under a grassy bank.

I’ve always been a little suspicious when berry picking because of that time you and I stopped and picked olallieberries on the coast, and saw the snake. I swore it was a rattler and you thought otherwise. We don’t have olallieberries around her, not yet any way.

Remember how we made berry cobbler that afternoon? Everybody in the house, and all their friends came over? Elliot played “Cripple Creek” on his banjo and I knew all the lyrics. Was that boy cute or what? All that Dixieland talk and the charm to go with it. Then you mixed in modern attitudes towards the environment and ethnic diversity and he was it! It seemed like there was a different girl coming over to see him every week. If I’d been any more interested in blond, southern manhood than I am now, that is to say not at all, I’d have fallen for him myself. But I do sometimes admit to wondering if he ever got married!

I was up to my elbows in berries and sugar this afternoon, remembering that day. Sugar’s been hard to get since the war began, but a military gentleman owed me a favor, and I got him to pay up in sugar. Our boys in blue, particularly those of his rank, seem to be able to get whatever they want. It’ll sure be nice to have those jars put up this winter.

I suppose you’ll be surprised to see this letter. It’s been a few years, one way or another since we saw each other, hasn’t it? You’ve been on my mind a good bit, and I’ve been meaning to get in touch. There’s a lot to tell, and it’s hard to know exactly where to start. I suppose I ought to begin by telling you that that paper you typed up for me in that class I took that last winter quarter, “A Study in Original Source”, has really come in useful in my, well I guess you’d just have to call it my new life.

(Continued tomorrow)

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