I’m supposed to be writing today, I think, about graduations and graduates and mine, in particular. My graduates, I mean. Not my graduations which were dull beyond measure to me. To everyone, probably, other than the parents for whom graduations are a plodding, majestic thing, marking success, at least ostensibly, but perhaps, if the parents are honest, relief. Relief that we’ve raised children this far. Relief that those unfinished, delayed, procrastinated projects were, in fact, completed eventually or at least didn’t affect the final outcome too, too much. Relief that the ways our children were pushed and pulled and failed and rallied and stretched and contracted are done for now. For a moment. For a speck. And they–and we–get to take a mini breather and regroup.
I’m supposed to be writing about that–and supposed to be steaming robes and showering and assembling myself for hooting and hollering and general merriment–but, instead, I’m thinking about blackberries. The invasive kind. The Himilayans with their giant canes and giant-er thorns and reaching, stretching arms and burrowing shoots and opportunistic mentality and incredible, unbelievable work ethic. Never has there ever been an Oregonian or Washingtonian or British Columbian who hasn’t vocally rued the Himalayan blackberry. Who doesn’t know the burning of the biceps and the triceps and the quads and the hams and the glutes after a day trying to wrestle these behemoths from the earth. Who can’t describe exquisitely the feeling of ripped flesh after trying to extricate a hand from a patch that’s coopted earth you thought was yours only to have the blackberries laugh and laugh and laugh at your audacity. To say that the humans in this part of the world view the Himalayan blackberry with spite and malice and rancor and acrimony is understatement. It is, always, war.
Except.
Except in late July when the first blackberries are ripe enough to pull from the tips of the canes, and we start to harvest the fruit, sticking our scarred hands back into that same patch that already stole its pound of flesh, considering the sacrifice worthy. And in August when the fruit is so plentiful, we bake it into pie and can in as jam and puree it for ice cream and freeze it for winter. And in September when the final round of stragglers runs across the finish line, finally reaching full ripeness so we can pluck the hot fruit straight from the vine into our mouths and squish it with our tongues, no teeth required.
Did you know blackberries aren’t true berries at all? A true berry develops from a single flower’s ovary with a fleshy pericarp (the fruit wall) and multiple seeds. Tomatoes are true berries, and grapes, and bananas, and blueberries, and, somehow, avocados, although don’t ask me to explain how that’s true since it definitely has the one seed only. Blackberries, however, are compound fruits, or aggregate fruits, which develop from a single flower with multiple ovaries which cluster and develop tiny fruitlets (that’s a real word) known as drupelets, each of which contains its own miniscule seed.
And IDK why today, of all the days, blackberries and their stamina in the face of revulsion and their sweetness and their shirk-the-definition-of-berry-ness and their use-their-itty-bitty-seeds-to-propagate-the-earth-ness and their insistence on standing their ground and staining our hands and pricking our skin and making a general, delicious nuisance of themselves should lay claim to all the space in my brain. But then I pause for a second and sit with it. In the sun on this graduation day. Looking at the blackberry flowers blooming on the hill beside my house. Looking at my queer rainbow babies readying themselves to walk a stage and shake a hand and accept a certificate.
Knowing that they’ve faced the same revulsion and you-don’t-belong messages. Knowing that their high school years were poisoned by a school board who tried to ban their pride flags and their beings. Knowing that others came along to defend them in court and in the classroom and in their hearts, declaring their sweetness in the midst of the pain. Defending their space in this place. Allowing them to take root and thrive. And perhaps the analogy is a little wonky and heavy-handed, comparing, as I accidentally have, my children’s experience to that of an invasive plant. But perhaps the complexity of it and wrestling with its inconsistencies is exactly right. Because that’s a lot to lay on a plant. And it’s a lot to lay on a child. I dare say, neither deserve the hostility for simply existing as berries who don’t match the nomenclature to which they were assigned. But somehow, magically, majestically, they both bear the most magnificent fruit.
