Family Reminders by Julie Danneberg

Author:Julie Danneberg [Danneberg, Julie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-60734-502-2
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Published: 2009-08-19T04:00:00+00:00

Nine

“Would you run down to Brown’s Emporium for me?” Mama asked as soon as I walked in from school and dropped my book bag on the kitchen chair.

“Oh, Mama, can’t I do it tomorrow?” I asked, breathing in the delicious, warm smell of just-baked bread.

“No. Daddy is out of pipe tobacco,” Mama said in a tone that made it perfectly clear that there was to be no argument. She handed me a piece of bread slathered with wild raspberry preserves. “Here, have a snack before you go,” she said, softening her voice and kissing me on the head as she went back to her chores. One sweet-sour bite brought the memories of last summer flooding back.

Mama, Daddy, and I left the house early one morning to pick raspberries. We hiked up the road past the house until it was no longer a road but a dusty trail into the mountains. Daddy whistled as he carried the picnic basket and his fishing pole. Mama and I both carried tin buckets. Up and over the ridge we climbed until we reached a scraggly mountain meadow dotted with wildflowers. The creek bubbled and rushed along past the raspberry bushes, their branches full of knobby, red fruit.

“Heaven on earth,” Daddy said, taking in a deep breath. I breathed in, too, big gulps of moist air that smelled of the river, pine, and the sweetness of ripe fruit.

Mama and I rolled up our sleeves and went to work plucking ripe, plump raspberries off the prickly branches. Daddy gathered firewood and started a campfire. Then he stuck a worm on his hook and began to fish. The sun climbed higher and hotter in the sky, and the only sounds were the rustle of the raspberry branches and the rushing of the river.

Finally Daddy called us to a lunch of trout cooked over the campfire. “Why is it that food always tastes better on a picnic?” Mama asked, after cutting into the tender trout with her fork, washing it down with the icy stream water, and topping her meal off with fresh, sweet raspberries.

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