I wrote this homage a few years ago, prompted by a picture I took that’s mentioned in the story. Sadly, I can’t locate the picture now. I originally published this in 2011 in another blog called FromBetween.
One day my mom, aunt, daughter, and grandma were picking raspberries at my aunt’s farm in southeastern Minnesota. Fields of corn bordered two sides of the farmstead: on the east, lush green crops followed the hill to the black-dirt river valley below; to the west, the neat fields were trimmed by forests crowded with oak and maple trees. Cows lowed in their pen across the road from the house. Bees buzzed, some working in the garden and others joining us in the berry patch. We stooped in the bright sunlight to find the ripened berries, the best of which were in the hardest to reach places. Nine times out of ten we grazed the prickles with an arm or poked them straight on with a finger and thumb, but the plump red berries were worth it. Then, almost like a magician pulling flowers out of her sleeve, Grandma pulled out a round fabric-covered thing from her pocket, twisted it a couple of times and formed it into a purple polka-dotted hat. She casually put the hat on her head and returned to picking berries. We laughed, I took a picture, and we finished filling our baskets.
Grandma died in 2006 at age 99. She was the second wife to two husbands, taught me to sew, and gave me homemade sugar cookies every time I stopped in for a rare visit. She could smell grape gum two rooms away and pulled diaper pins out of her purse once when I needed them for my son (and she was 70 at the time.) She went to church every Sunday and took care of Hattie across the street for years and years. I saw her seldom, wrote to her rarely, and loved her so much. I wish I could crawl through that photo and stand under the warm sun with her again. I would whisper to her, “Grandma, I’ll never forget you. I’ll wear that caftan we made together for longer than I probably should, then keep it in a box in my basement and move it many times. The laundry basket from Hattie’s will always be in my bedroom and I’ll think of you every time I see it. I’ll tell the diaper pin story over and over. Most of all, I’ll wish I was more like you.”
Susan Fuchtman 