boys n berries

The school year wound down and the days warmed up and suddenly the strawberries were ready to be picked.

Revisiting the berry farm every June may not be as foundational as traveling to new places, but it's becoming a tradition.  And when the boys asked to go, after too many Not right this seconds it felt good to say Yes, let's do it.

I knew from listening to their conversations that their primary motivation was to find a frog.  Berries were secondary.  But I've learned that when they can be the architects of our day, they never fail to find ways for routine to mean spectacular.  My job is to drink in their exuberant, giddy energies and to try to respond gracefully to whatever occurs.

And maybe it’s far-fetched, but I’m hoping these trips act partly as an answer to why I won’t buy them all the new toys, the ones that provide a two hour hit of joy before becoming forgotten in the closet.  Hoping, as they get older, they'll remember they can always find something fascinating outside.

We passed a cemetery on the way to the patch, and Tolliver asked whether that was where Celia is buried up?

She's not buried at all, I tried to explain, mostly because we wanted to be able to feel like we could talk to her where ever we were.  Like today, if you want to tell her about the berries, you could, I went on.

He may not keep concise memories of his gentle older sister, but I hope somehow, at some level, those brief few weeks they had here together might settle into his soul and he would be better for it.

Just like I hope these small, simple excursions might lodge into the scaffolding of their minds, might become hazy, half-glimpsed visions of happy summers when they were small.