Sunday, August 25, 2013

Picking Raspberries on a Sunday in July

I know I owe you some blogs and there will be more...this is from 7/22/13

 7/22/13 20:36 home


Yesterday, before church Bella asked if we can go down to the woods and pick raspberries.  So, after service and soon after singing and clapping our hands, Go Tell it on the Mountain… over the hills…coming out of church I thought of Garrison Keillor and knew I would write about the service and of course spending the time with Bella.  Behind the white steeple Congregational Church on North Country Rd in Mount Sinai, is an old cemetery as well as a county nature preserve.  We walked in the woods as we picked wild raspberries from clusters in the bushes. They were sweet and sour and the seeds popped between our teeth.  It was hot yesterday, but not the staggering heat of the week before.  We went back to Stony Brook University in the afternoon with a colander to pick more raspberries since this is peak pick season for the wild berries.  I brought Joe with us who barely picked but listened to his music with large black ear phones.  Our twelve year-old -son is too cool to pick berries or to say,” Father dearest, who I love so much.  Then don’t eat any.”  Later, after dinner I had vanilla ice cream with the rinsed berries sprinkled over the sweet mound and sat outside letting the pleasure consummate in my mouth.  It’s dark.  The windows are open since the air conditioning has to be shut off for the night. The pan for the runoff water is over flowing in the attic.  Ron will come tomorrow on his break and fix it.  Can we spend the night without the air conditioning?  Sure.  Ali texts Ron and he calls her.  It’s a wonderful relationship they have and I can sit back and let my wife take charge of these things.  I could see the stagnant water in the orange translucent pipe in the attic.  I can do nothing. I’m getting away from the wild raspberries, and especially from when Bella said, “Jesus,” and I tried to tell her, Geez is a better term.  I explained taking the Lord’s name in vain, but the concept was too abstract for her.  She responded, "Well, what do you mean?  Will God be angry with me?"   No.  And the other day she told Ali that she has brown bags under eyes and what can she do about them?  She is ten.  Tea-bags.  What does she do when we get home?  Is cold water OK for the tea bags?  That’s fine.  I am working from home which reminds me of another comment Ben made when I was in Boston, well you wrote on the train when commuting, how are you going find time to write?  I need to make time to write.   This is my time and I am thinking of Bella in the back seat earlier today sitting between Joe and Emma since I have few minutes to get the girls to the train station.  Want to know how much I know about REM?  Well, the name stands for Rapid Eye Movement and one of them got sick and said he wanted to leave the band to become a farmer.  By George, she’s an REM fan.  I can listen to her for hours.  Tonight, she is sleeping over Joe and Diana’s house.  After dropping the girls off at the train station I brought her over there and told Diana I have to run and she said OK and heard Bella say BYE…I should have hugged her, there was no I love you. She was beaming since she was spending the night with her grandparents. She is the special one on this summer night.  Time to take out the trash; then a beer, and tea and maybe an early sleep under a full moon that shines into our open window as the crickets chirp and the fire flies cause us to think they are shooting stars slowly fading away. 

Thank you for reading this

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