When I was a Kid

Our Manitoba farm was a spacious, functional place with large vegetable gardens, huge, green lawns, and a few trees and bushes that were distantly related to the fruit family. They were the hardy varieties that could possibly dare to come back to Manitoba every Spring : fruit trees that bore dry, gritty chokecherries (they were more pit than cherry, but we had lots of fun comparing dry, brown tongues after stuffing our faces with them). There was rhubarb of course, sweet, juicey raspberries, and "ole bassem" bushes (which I think are a type of current), and my favourite: the gooseberry bushes.

On hot summer afternoons after our chores of bean picking, garden hoeing, tree watering, pea shelling, lawn mowing, window washing,and pet tending (just to mention a few), we would skip across the scorching black garden soil in our bare feet to engage in some gooseberry games. There was the "keep a straight face while you eat 20 unbelievably sour green berries" game. And the "how many gooseberries can you fit in your mouth at a time" game. And then there was the fun of eating gooseberries just because you could- no one would tell you not to, and nobody would tell you "that's enough".

I always had a weird conflicted feeling about eating gooseberries. I felt like I was selfishly wrenching them off their homey branches (an abduction of sorts) then mutilating them with my teeth before sending them down to their acidy death. I told my older brother about my guilt one day (he was four years my senior) and I've never forgotten his response. He felt that the gooseberries were thrilled to be chosen- that it was honorable to be given a warm home in a human's stomach and be rescued from the drudgery of hanging off a bush in a hot, windy garden.

This complicated my angst over the berries. If Ken was right, then I should do my utmost to find homes for all the berries on the tree before the worms or the cold winds of the inevitable winter got to them first. But if he was wrong and I was right, then we ought to leave the berries in their family groups and allow them to live out their lives in peace.

If I find the fool who said that childhood is carefree, I'll pin him down and stuff him with gooseberries until he BEGS for mercy.