Memories and Raspberries

A story about how a taste or a smell can bring back memories but also initiate change.

The house was quiet except for the kitty playing with a bead and scampering about. It was late and Mommy Kins was not use to a quiet house. She realized that now that her son had graduated, she would eventually have to deal with an empty nest. Her name really was not Mommy Kins. It was a nick name that all the teenagers and young adults had been calling her. 

Her hair was a long tangled grey and brown mass from napping. She had limped down the stairs to search the refrigerator for something to eat. She found some frozen raspberries in the freezer. For some reason the smell of the raspberries and the flavor, was stronger than the usual frozen store bought variety. As she smelled the sweet scent and tasted the berries; a memory from child hood flooded her mind. She could visualize the farm she lived on when she was 11 years old. She remembered all of the wild red raspberry bushes and black berry bushes that she would gather, as a child. How she missed that beautiful farm in Newport Vermont. It had a perfect view of the green mountains. 

After that memory washed across her she started thinking about the second farm that she lived at, as an adult, in Minnesota. She use to grow herbs and flowers there. She would make salves and teas. Instead of gathering raspberries she gathered raspberry leaves for tea and left the raspberries for her children and the wild life to gather. It had been 14 years since she lived there. Now she lived in a small city next to a patch of woods but had been to ill and in to much pain to garden. 

Suddenly there was a knock on the door. Her daughter Kayla stopped by to see how she was doing. Her daughter was attending college and moved away from home already. Kayla said to her mother, "Mom I am worried about you. You are not taking care of yourself. I want you to live to see your Grandchildren." They both sat at the dining table and ate the remaining berries. 

Kayla told her, "Mom someday I am going to buy a piece of land with an extra cottage near my house where you can live and watch my children while I go to work." Mommy Kins smiled at the thought of her daughters fantasy. "Mom! I really do not think you are listening! I am really scared that you are going to die soon!. Mommy Kins reassured her daughter that she was listening and that she planned to live to be an old woman. 

Her daughter soon left not feeling like she had been heard and sad that her mom seemed to be in such ill health. The thing is Mommy Kins was living on borrowed time. There were many times she was at deaths door. It is just Death would not let her in. Death knew she was needed by more than just her family. Mommy Kins was magical. She had an ancient power that few people are aware of. A power, that society teaches people to fear; with their morbid movies and TV shows. Mommy Kins was a chrysalis of an ancient fairy and when she does die, she will be back to her old self. It is just Mommy Kins did not remember who she was. She just knew who she was in this life and that she planned to live to see her grandchildren. She had been listening to her daughter and was taking better care of herself. 

Soon after her daughter left her son came home from work. He was telling her about his day and he saw she was just staring into space not seeming to listen. He got mad, "Mom are you listening!" What was I just saying?" She replied, "You were telling me that you will be working tomorrow afternoon." "No!" he replied, "I did say that, but you only heard a little of what I was saying. I know you were just partially listening. I really don't feel like I can talk to you anymore or even confide in you." He stomped upstairs to his room and left her sitting at the table next to the empty bowl, where once had been raspberries.

She knew he had a hard day line cooking and that he was just using her as his sounding board. So she did not take his anger to personally. She stood up as her bones crackled. The arthritis made her left leg so sore she had a permanent limp. She hobbled up the stairs and into her room. She made a grocery list. On the list was raspberry tea and frozen raspberries. Inhaling and exhaling a long sigh, she turned off the light and fell asleep. She dreamed about flying around the flowers of the raspberry bushes in the fields of pine hill. A little living ghost, haunting the places of the past.