Today I am sporting more than a summer tan and a few liver spots on my forearms. Today I am sporting scratches from raspberry canes. It is a long, long time since I have worn scratches from raspberry canes, although as a teenager I spent a lot of time out on farms picking both strawberries and raspberries.
There is something nostalgic about doing something you did years ago…I knew exactly where to find the best berries (deep inside the bushes) and I knew you pick “clean”…no leaving ripe berries to fall to the ground before the next picker arrives in a few days.
I ate a few but it was the fresh air that really beguiled me and that “did me in” later in the day…once I arrived home I could hardly make it to the couch where I collapsed for forty winks.
My friends, Ron and Helen and I were on an “Adventure”…well, it was an adventure for me anyway. An hour’s drive past rolling fields of wheat and baled hay… puffs of clouds coasting across that big, blue, beautiful Alberta sky…what a picture! Our destination was the Mennonite farm down the road with its fields of peas, beans, raspberries and other garden delights.
All I could think of was the hard work involved in a farm like that and yes there were a few weeds around. I seldom see weeds anymore. My garden is so small there is no room for weeds.
Later we ended up at a small town’s “eatery”. Eating out several times a year together is something Harry and I had often done with them. We have kept the tradition and although he is gone, he is very much with us in thought. We have dined at golf courses, hotel restaurants, at my own home where my talented daughter and son-in-law prepared a scrumptious feast…(Harry was then too ill with cancer to go to a restaurant) and once we went to a friends, who prepared a lavish veal-cutlet dinner with musical entertainment in which we joined in.
But today it was a small out of the way country cafe we ate in. There was great food, a cupboard full of baby quilts you could buy and a fair bit of plain country dirt on the floor that the farmer customers had dragged in on their boots. For dessert we shared a “sticky toffee pudding.” Not your usual restaurant fare.
Most of us spend a life time thinking the biggest is best and often we are terribly disappointed…that house we planned for years, then sold when the kids left home (it was just too big for two people)…the larger car that I hated parking and once pulled the chrome strip right off trying to get it out of a parking place. My dear husband’s first words to me were, ”Are you okay, sweetheart?” Bless his heart! The car is long gone but the memory of his kindness and concern lingers on.
Sometimes it is the small things that become so special…most of us have tiny drawings stashed away…works of art by our children and grandchildren…they are more precious than the bought paintings that grace our walls. And those Christmas tree decorations that we cling to that are gilded with memories ever so dear.
So today I thank God for my special “adventure” and walk down memory lane…and even my raspberry cane scratches. How wonderful is our Lord to fill our lives these great and small remembrances.
