Blueberries

Arriving today, I asked Dad if he was hungry – he sometimes doesn’t eat when he’s alone. “No, I had a big breakfast.” He eyeballs the shopping bags I’ve set down on the couch. “Got any dessert?” Smart man. He knows he can count on me to bring treats. “Blueberry cheesecake,” I say, getting a plate for him. He takes a few bites, then says, contentedly, “big, fat blueberries.”

Blueberries always make me think of Dad because there are two long rows of blueberry bushes in the backyard of our house in Gloucester, pretty much all that remains of the gardens and fruit trees that surrounded the house when Dad was growing up there. During my childhood, every year Dad would make a trip up there in the Spring to prune the blueberry bushes, and then, when we would go up during my school vacation in August, the bushes would be loaded with fruit. I’ve never had blueberry pancakes like the ones my mother would make with those blueberries since.

“Are you reading something?” Dad interrupts this entry. “No, writing. I’m writing about you.” I read him the previous paragraph. “There’s no garden there at all anymore,” he says. “The blueberry bushes are there, they just need work.” “They probably need a lot of pruning.” And I wish I had paid more attention when I was younger so that I could take up the yearly ritual. I have no idea how to prune a blueberry and he can’t teach me now.

Or can he? One way to find out. “Dad, how do you know where to prune a blueberry?” “Did I ever know how to prune blueberries?” “You did it every year.” “Until when?” “Maybe five or six years ago?” I’m not really sure. “I haven’t been to Gloucester in decades.” “Dad, we were there in August. We go there a lot.” Even though I know a lot about the mind and how it works and what can go wrong, I am still sometimes stunned at how things can just disappear, as though they never happened. And here come the tears again.