of life and berry picking

I went blackberry picking today.

The best part of it was the company I had with me: three magnificent kids who were so thrilled about the activity-- about the berry picking and berry eating and about the horses riding by, and about the boats and the log booms and the waves on the Fraser River-- that the afternoon was punctuated by their repeated shrieks of joy and sheer excitement. Even the size, colour, and quantity of horse manure was exciting to them. Berry stained fingers and purple tongues and glee. What fun!

Then there's the taste of sun-warmed berry juice exploding from the plump lobes of the ripest, roundest blackberries. It's hard to describe that flavour. Impossible to reproduce. It's the taste of August and summer and deep purple sunshine.

And then, along the lines of "the moral of the story is...", is the realization that for the satisfaction of the taste of those sun-warmed, plump, juicy berries, one has to risk being torn to shreds by the unforgiving ever-so-protective thorns of the blackberry brambles upon which these juicy treats grow. And the ripest, plumpest berries are always the ones just out of reach-- the ones you have to lean into the brambles for, reaching so high that bramble thorns press into your arms and legs, drawing sacrificial blood. You have to really want to taste sweetness to go for those berries, to lean in, to reach, to risk the wounds.

"I've almost got it! Have your bucket ready, N," I say.

"But you're BLEEDING!" she cries

"I may be bleeding, but I've got the best berry yet!"

"Mommy, she's BLEEDING."

"I won't be deterred. Do you know the word deterred?"

"No."

"I may be bleeding, but it's not going to stop me from going for the best berries."

As in blackberry picking, so also in life. May I always reach for the best and be undeterred by the thorny and painful complications that hinder my reach.