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When Mom Served Raspberries
Imaginations ran wild
My mom was all about healthy snacks but knew enough about branding not to call them “healthy snacks” so she’d just ask if we wanted “something to eat.”
A lot of our household items felt either like sentimental family heirlooms or like timeless, origin-less utilitarian practicalities that had always been there, like carbon or darkness.
The indestructible, colorless blender.
A bagel guillotine so old and reliable I never learned to use a knife.
An eternal Pyrex serving dish with five sections, four of which were like planets orbiting the Sun of the center console, designed to hold a container of dip.
One day with the specific spark of creativity borne from adolescent boredom, my friends and I made a March Madness-style “People vs. Foods Bracket” and voted on which was better, say, Will Smith vs. rotisserie chicken. Hillary Clinton vs. au gratin potatoes. And so on.
One of the dishes my friend John nominated for the bracket was “berries jubilee,” his instant and genius moniker for the melange of strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and other natural delicacies my mom served us in that Pyrex.
Berries jubilee!
It sounded like some 17th-century Basque Country carnival where all the townspeople would build elaborate fruit-themed parade floats and joyously sangria themselves into oblivion to honor the goddess of the vine.
An extremely health-conscious friend refuses to eat berries because his doctor parents have convinced their family that the sugar in fruit is bad for you. That might be true, but in our house fruit was a delectable — and positively nutritious! — staple of after-school cuisine. I love the stuff. Revere the stuff. It’s a major part of my diet, sure, and also my writing. Like the poem I wrote that begins:
I want to return every day to you inevitable and triumphant, noisy and benevolent like the rain’s million hearts beating on your roof and shutters and kissing the blackberries in your field that flourish invisibly like faith.
But of all the fruits Mom served, I was especially captivated by the raspberry.
