Tess and the Raspberry

based on a true story

Raspberries on the Forest Interior Floor, William Mason Brown, mid-1800s.

Author’s note: I said a prayer earlier this month asking for some guidance, a bit of inspiration around what I could give to you, my readers, as a way of thanking you for your support, your kindness, your open hearted comments, and your generous willingness to share bits and pieces of your own lives here. Then, in tumbled a little raspberry that touched my heart, just like so many of you do. A raspberry with a message I knew I wanted to share. I hope you find in this story what I did. It’s for you. Maybe even for your children or grandchildren if you think they might like it.

May you all have a beautiful Christmas full of love and peace, deeply nourishing, pleasurable food, surrounded by the humans that mean the most to you. I will be returning in the New Year with my stories. Until then, look for me in the chat where I hope we can share pictures of our feasts, big and small, and glimpses into the traditions and joys of Christmas.

Without further ado, I give thee the story of a raspberry and a little, round-faced, black-haired girl named, Tess.

Once upon a time, in a land faraway there lived fields of endless plants. One after another, in great rows, further than the eye could see, they grew. Green bushes with small red, shining balls clinging to their branches. Above them were great metal arched frames covered in plastic. The plastic made sure the temperature was just right. The plastic kept away the birds that would try to eat those tantalising ruby red fruits. That fruit was not meant to be shared with the squirrels and the songbirds. Those raspberries were destined for lands faraway where snow covered the earth because it wasn’t time for raspberries, or any other fruit to grow.

Among the thousands of plants under the hundreds of plastic homes lived one little raspberry. It started like any other raspberry - a wee flower burst forward from its mother. Then, in time, that mother plant collected the energy of the sun and nutrients from the soil and the water. Sometimes that mother plant would reach for the raindrops that pattered against the plastic above her, but those wild waters could not fall upon her leaves. Sometimes, she stretched her leaves, hungry for the unfiltered sun, but the sun could not touch her, not fully, not with all that she had. This left the mother plant hungry, but she used what she had to grow and to produce life because that is what the living do - life in service to life.

Sometimes the people that grew the raspberries fed them extra stuff to make them grow bigger and faster and to make them produce fruit. More fruit than they could have grown without the special food they were given.

And the berries on those plants did indeed grow. From a flower to a small green, hard little ball, segmented into miraculous little pieces, each dotted with a seed. A tiny parcel of potential life in each little piece. Quickly, the raspberries turned from green to red and great, thundering machines came rolling over each of the mother plants, pulling and squeezing, plucking and stripping them of their fruit. That fruit, all of those millions of plump raspberries were fed onto conveyor belts and tumbled down shoots and funnels made of steel and plastic before being poured out into small plastic trays, each with a bed of absorbent pads on the bottom. There they would stay for their long journeys by ship and plane and truck until they found themselves under the fluorescent lights of a grocery store thousands of miles away.

In each plastic tray the raspberries waited. They were all mixed up. None of them knew each other. But they waited patiently for the birds or the hoarding squirrel. There was nothing else to do. They were suspended. “From mother to mouth” - that was there motto. Or, at the very least, to the earth where they could do their part in reciprocity. But this? These plastic boxes, piled one on top of the other? What was there to do there but protect each tiny seed in each juicy enveloped capsule that they carried? They shined and enticed and hoped to do their part. That’s all they knew to do. It was programmed into them even there on the grocery store shelf.

In amongst the millions of berries lived one special berry. Special not because it had something the other berries did not. Special only because it came with a story to tell and that’s what I’m sharing with you today. The story of that intrepid raspberry and a little girl named, “Tess” that had the eyes to see it and the heart to listen.

Raspberry Girl, William-Adolphe Bouguereeau, 1890

At the grocery store, that cold winter morning, Tess’ mom was buying some things she hadn’t stored for the winter from their own garden. Tess had helped her mom make jams and jellies with their raspberries that they stored in their root cellar. There the shelves were full of all sorts of glistening preserves in beautiful glass jars. It looked like a treasure chest glowing with the luminescent colours of true riches - sun warmed peaches floating in a golden honey syrup, dark red cherries bobbing in a thick syrup with swollen vanilla beans wrapping around the edges of the jar. There were rows and rows of sauces and chutneys, pickles and dried fruits. There was no need to buy raspberries from a faraway land.

As they were unloading their bags from the grocery cart into their car, Tess spotted something at the bottom of the cart. It was a lone raspberry sitting in the corner of the cart. It must have escaped from its plastic prison cell that some other shopper had decided to bring home. There it sat alone, unblemished and determined, shining and enticing as best it could in a car garage, hoping to complete its mission.

Tess reached in and rescued the berry, turning it over in her warm, small hands. What a marvel, she thought. From so far away you came, such a journey from your home, only to end up here in a car parkade full of the smoke from tailpipes - a dark, concrete world. And you’re still firm and beautiful. What do you want, little berry?

Tess held onto the raspberry, careful not to crush it, and held it up to the window as they drove. It was cold outside, but the sun was warm through the window and she thought that maybe that raspberry had missed the sun. When did it last see it? She thought about what she would want if she were a berry. She knew that when animals, even people-animals, ate fruit, they were part of what made that plant go on. It could grow again, somewhere else. It could feed more people.

But what about this berry here, in this cold? Could it grow again? Would it grow again? Tess didn’t know. She didn’t know what would happen to the raspberry or what the best thing to do was. How could she know? She stared at the raspberry on the ledge of the window trying to listen.

The Raspberry Thieves, Susan Waters, mid-1800s

When they got home, Tess took the raspberry and walked to the skeleton of the large apple tree in her yard. The leaves had fallen months earlier and the tree was silent in its winter slumber. Still, the birds came, or at least the birds that stayed over the winter. The black capped chickadees, the ravens and crows, and the blue jays were most abundant, but it was the chickadees that liked the apple tree the best. She put the raspberry, upside down on a small branched offshoot growing off one of the thick apple tree limbs.

Tess didn’t know what would become of the raspberry. Maybe one of the birds would find it and delight in its miraculous morsel as the snow fell on its head. Maybe a squirrel would erupt from its winter home and stuff the whole thing into its enormous cheeks, overwhelmed with such luck. Maybe the seeds of that berry would be deposited under the pear tree where, come spring, a tiny plant would erupt, just one little shoot, reaching, returning to the earth and the sun that its ancestors could only long for.

Or maybe none of that would happen. Maybe the berry would freeze in the cold and be toppled off the tree by a thrashing winter wind. Maybe it would simply fall to the earth and be covered by snow. But even then, even for those few moments, that berry would know the sun, unencumbered by plastic. It would know the wind and it would decay, and finally die, resting in peace because of its hope in the everlasting seed.

Faith, dear friends. We do because it is right without needing to know how it all unfolds. Kindness feeds through faith, not always the sweet juice of reward. So says Tess and a raspberry ambassador from a land faraway.