Blueberry Bucket

The roar of a small engine rushing down the street wakes me on this late Thursday afternoon. At first I’m alarmed by the amount of light in the room, the patterns in the wallpaper. I sit up too fast and my head reels. And then I remember; driving for a couple of hours in the morning rain. Pulling up on the familiar patch of grass and feeling my body finally relax for the first time in months. There was a rush to get inside, pulling the essentials for the next few days out of the car and dashing across the narrow street to the back door. Everything put away in its place. And then a nap.

    There is breathing behind me. Small, quick breaths. I do not move, for fear of waking him before he's fully charged and ready for the rest of the day's adventure. The first day of this first adventure. My mind, quiet and peaceful, begins picking up the ghosts of memories.

    One step through the door and I’m hit with the smell of wild roses, clean laundry, and fresh pickles being stewed in the kitchen. No words are being spoken between the team of labourers at the table as they cut the onions and zucchini. The sounds of bubbling, chopping, and some radio talk show faintly droning on in the background are only interrupted every hour or so by the sound of a semi out on the highway or an ATV on the road heading down to the beach.

    I look into the hub of the house, spot the cauldron-sized pot presiding on the stove. Early fall looms outside the window, giving way to the deep blue ocean in the distance. The breeze scrapes tree branches against the glass. The light filters through the orange and red and yellow leaves, splash through the trinkets in the window, and falls onto the floor and walls like light at the bottom of a pool. The radio program has changed. A fiddle, the leaves just outside keeping tempo.

    I have spent every summer at this house. As soon as school was out I would be waiting for my chance to hop in their car and make the drive here: Around the Bay. A couple of hours and we’d be there, parking on that small knot of grass. The salt in the air was always different here. So close to the sea, ocean spray on your face crisp and cool. Early in the summer, I would rush up the stairs to find a spot to read for the next few hours, window wide open. Nothing else on my mind but reuniting with my oldest friend, walks in the forest, climbing the cliffs, and helping my elders.

    The sisters would worry over the pickles. Enough sugar, not enough onion. The hands of their husbands glide over buckets of blueberries, clearing out the white, green, and red berries, the branches, and the little creatures that snuck their way into the bucket. Gallons of blueberries are stacked against the wall waiting their turn for a cleaning. 

    There is seventy years between the oldest and youngest in the room. It has always been this way. Eyes turn toward me. I am the boarder. The reader. The student. And part-time blueberry cleaner. I sit and listen to the sporadic quips and comments, answer any questions. But the conversation soon slows to a trickle. We work in silence, my bags still waiting in the porch to be brought upstairs to my room. This is the late summer, blueberries come first. 

     Sitting and cleaning blueberries for hours. The jams and desserts we will enjoy all winter made with these very blueberries in my hand. The bags frozen to be made into pancakes on cold January mornings. Small batches of wild raspberries I would pick in a neighbour's back yard would be added to the kitchen table for inspection. Saved for cobbler in March. 

    One of them starts telling a story. All listen intently, but no eyes falter from their task. The tale is rich, colourful, filled with the names of long dead compatriots and cousins and friends, an occasional digression to figure out who a particular character was married to. Stories like this will be told by everyone but me, the listener, over the next few days. My stories have decades of accumulation before I will be telling them.

    The rhubarb has overgrown the garden. No more zucchini or strawberry patch. The lawn grows thicker each year with hay and the walkway gives way to the weeds that split the stones. The house is cold and empty, and the signs of rot in one of the windows is a little more obvious this year. No one sings good morning to the house while the kettle whistles and blinds are lifted. No pitter patter of feet above getting ready to come down for their breakfast. A cobweb creeps from ceiling to cabinet. From corner to lamp shade. 

    But I am here, the first time in years. A small hand held within mine. The ghosts of the past, the smells, the sounds, the vibrations. Ghosts stir.

    After our nap we head downstairs to properly look around. Wide eyes in a little boy’s head peer around corners, question every inch. He sees the pantry, stocked with every tool imaginable. A baker's dream. I start putting together an afternoon snack and he finds the collection of salt meat buckets under the sink. He turns and raises an eyebrow, a question on the tip of his tongue. 

    I smile. 

    “They’re for filling with blueberries.”

    And we fill the house Around the Bay with new memories.