Summer marks something special for me – a childhood memory I can pluck and taste anytime I like. Intertwined in these recollections are the endless hikes through sweltering backwoods trails with my dad seeking out sunny patches in the forest.
Blackberries thrive in full sun, as does poison ivy. Locate blackberry bushes and you’ll often find that three-leafed menace: a yin and yang sharing the same dirt.
But this blog isn’t about North Georgia flora. It’s about my dad’s esophageal cancer and the nasty tumor in the lymph node squeezing his trachea and making it all but impossible to eat.
The cancer has also limited his ability to talk – one of several issues this most recent round of radiation is supposed to fix.
I’ve taken him to so many rounds of radiation and chemotherapy over the past several months that I’ve honestly lost track.
As I drive him to these appointments, our conversations are mostly one-sided because of the aforementioned difficulty speaking. I try to keep things light. He listens, nodding. He speaks in a whisper, mostly muffled by the sound of traffic.
Just last week however, he did utter something unmistakable: “I hope I get better in time for blackberry season.”
We talked about it a little. I said we should use that as motivation to keep going – to get better. He responded with something along the lines of (paraphrasing) if he still can’t swallow by then, perhaps he can chew and spit.
That’s bittersweet (no pun intended), because there’s something so vital to the enjoyment of food lost in the idea of chewing and not swallowing. I can’t pretend to know what it feels like not to be able to nourish oneself through the natural means, but I figure it must leave something to be desired.
In the meantime, as we hope and pray for the radiation to do its work, my dad gets most of his nourishment through a feeding tube. It’s a little awkward for him to do on his own, so my mom and I take turns helping him with it.
It’s been like this for quite a while now, so you can imagine how enticing the idea of food must be. Envision the tart, sweet satisfying burst of blackberry juice on your tongue on a sunny afternoon.
Now, imagine it when you’ve had little to nothing to eat for months except what’s piped directly into your body by unnatural means.
I bet that blackberry would taste like heaven.
June marks the start of blackberry season: I think back to our many saunters through the woods in search of the sunny spots where the plants thrive: Stepping over the poison ivy, stepping on the poison ivy, or just wearing long pants to keep it from touching our legs.
Sun burning our necks, the air so humid you could backstroke your way right through it. And somewhere hanging in the air is that subtle scent of ripening wild berries growing fatter in the North Georgia forests.
It’s the kind of childhood memory that makes me grateful for all the hikes through the woods and all the seasonal wild fruit harvested in stray grocery bags or zip-locks we stuffed into our pockets. It’s these kinds of memories that I hope and pray every day to continue to amass like so many bags stuffed to the brim with all the blackberries we could carry home.
I find myself wanting to hold on – to take more than my fair share. I want to keep making those memories.
After all, blackberry season is nearly here.