“Everything happens for a reason.”
A personal favorite colloquialism that often helped me process and accept my family’s cursed tendencies. Something bad happening just meant something worse could have happened or something better was still coming. I made it a habit to follow my gut and look for signs in the mundane.
Most recently, I found that my sign came in the form of bird poop. I told you, our family is cursed. There is lots of love and affection, but we do tend to have bad luck. Therefore, it should surprise no one that my latest message from the universe came from a pile of bird poop and the wild black raspberry bush it gave birth to. The bush my grandpa George never planted, but gave the opportunity to survive.
Every summer growing up, you would often find me at my grandparents’ house. We spent almost every other weekend up at their house playing games or enjoying their expansive backyard. In June, Grandpa George would give me a bucket, and we would go to the garage to pick as many black raspberries as we could from the giant bush that had grown on the building’s side. We’d bring them in, Grandma would wash them, and we would spend the rest of the afternoon eating spoils of my labor.
As the years went on, Grandpa joined me less and less at the raspberry bush for the picking. Instead, I had to make sure to get enough for the both of us to share. Then schedules got hectic, and health decreased, and the raspberry bushes just didn’t seem to be as important. The bushes by the garage became thinner and thinner. By the time Grandpa passed, no one could remember seeing a black raspberry.
Still, it was a memory that I cherished, and when Grandma decided to sell the house, I went over to the garage where I spent all the summers before, and found a tiny berry bush still holding on. I dug it up, and transferred it to my own home several miles away.
It didn’t bloom that summer. Or the summer after. Or the summer after that. I assumed it was transfer shock, a phenomenon that happens when you take a plant from its home and put it in a new environment. Sometimes, it takes a year or two before it fully adjusts. You just have to keep giving it love and letting it know it can make it through.
And my little raspberry plant got bigger and stronger and bolder every year. Its stems and leaves intertwined in the back corner of our gate year after year, but it would not produce even a single berry.
And life went on.
After Grandpa passed, we had several amazing years where I got married, started working as a teacher, and had my beautiful baby girl. We also had some rough patches. Grandma passed, more health issues came up for various family members, and I quit my job. I was confident in my reasoning why, but even a month into being a stay-at-home, I felt lost. I hadn’t adjusted, and it felt like I should have already, but I was still writing lesson plans down and researching management strategies in my free time.
Maybe I made a mistake.
Then I saw a berry. Not just one berry, but eight berries. Eight little black raspberries ready to be picked. I picked them, and I shared them with Dex. Just like Grandpa showed me.
Five years had passed since I had planted the small little bush in the corner of my yard. Five years and I was sent back to the slow and easy summers where family and making memories were all that mattered. Where smiles were easy, and laughs were contagious, and nothing mattered but the power found in a simple black raspberry created on a bush that was never planted, but given the opportunity to survive.
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