This evening I had to run out to two stores to buy diaper cream and milk ( I know; very glamorous), and at the grocery store, my last stop, I found myself waiting in a short line by the fruit display. As I stood there mindlessly surveying the fruit, my eyes stopped on a box of yellow raspberries. Those are pretty, I thought. I've only had yellow raspberries a few times in my life, mostly on desserts at formal restaurants. Yet here was a big stack of boxes of them in my neighborhood grocery store right there by the cash register, and they weren't even expensive. Lily and Annika will like those, I thought, as they both love berries of all kinds, and I knew they'd never seen, let alone, eaten, the yellow variety. I placed a box on the conveyor next to my carton of milk.
When I got home, I put the milk in the fridge and left the box of berries on the counter, forgetting about it. Later, after dinner, Lily went in to get herself a glass of water and came out holding it. What are these? she asked. Can we eat them?
I thought you'd have them for breakfast, I said, but if you're still hungry, sure. You can eat them right now.
Lily opened the box and ate a few of the raspberries. Wow! These are delicious, she said. Come here, Annika. You've got to try these yellow raspberries. Annika came running over, and a few minutes later the raspberries were gone. They had alternated taking small handfuls and savored them, Lily providing running commentary, as usual, and Annika oohing and ahhing with enthusiasm. I hadn't even tried a berry; I was too busy watching them enjoy them.
Lily brought the empty container to me. You might have to get some more of these, Mama, she said. I guess you can see we really, really liked them. I took the container, smiling, and brought it into the kitchen to put in the recycling bin. Before I did, I glanced at the cover. Golden raspberries, that's right. I thought. They call them golden raspberries.
Of course they do. Raspberries in any color but red are highly unusual, hard-to-come-by, rare, and even the plain old red ones are pretty luxurious, as anyone who's ever spent an hour or two picking to take home a few meager boxes will testify. Why yellow, when golden works just as well, lends credence--enhances--their specialness?
And children are very good, exceptional, really, at noticing special things, new things, details. Lily notices whenever there is a sliver of a crescent moon, when I wear a sweater I haven't worn in ages. Annika notices when I am not wearing my glasses, when there are flowers in the house.
A lesson, in this, for me? Raspberries are delicious, yellow raspberries are special, golden raspberries, by virtue of the name alone, are golden. Crowns are golden, sunlight is golden, silence is golden: Gold is timeless, priceless. If you are standing in a line at a grocery store and you see some golden raspberries, I suggest you buy a box. They're not always so easy to find. And make sure you remember what they're called as you eat them.
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When we moved into our house there were raspberries growing in the side yard. They had been planted many years earlier; the trees around them had grown high and blocked the sun, so while the canes themselves flourished they produced only a handful of fruit. But those first years we lived here, for a few fine days in the summer, I could walk barefoot through the damp grass holding my cereal bowl, and plunk a few berries on top. Nope, they weren’t golden, but the crunching sweetness was as good as gold and made me sigh from way down within.
Sadly, our acidic soil that kept the canes growing but not producing was prime earth for another creeper--poison ivy-- which lurked at the edges and finally invaded our berry patch. We kept it a bay as long as we could, until it infested the raspberries and we picked at our peril. There is only one way to get rid of poison ivy, and it kills raspberries too.
I don’t live near a green grocer, or a farmer’s market, but through the trail in the woods behind the house is a neighbor who has goats, chickens, rabbits and best of all, raspberries. He has invited us to pick in the past. You've made me realize that this summer we should take him up on it.
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