Do you know what these are? They’re raspberries,...

Do you know what these are? 

They’re raspberries, obviously. 

But these are special raspberries. These are raspberries I picked myself, from my own bush, from my own yard. 

I’ve wanted a raspberry bush of my own since I was very young. There were raspberry and blackberry bushes behind the swimming pool where I took my first lessons. My grandparents had raspberries in their garden. I’ve even been promised a bush a time or two, but until this summer, I’ve never had one of my very own. Most of the time, there was no where to plant it, and no point in planting, in setting down roots, anyway. Because I would just have to move again, and then there I would be, and here would my raspberry bush be, not doing me any good. Just another thing to leave behind. 

This summer, two friends of mine who are a couple and have one of the most amazing gardens I’ve seen, gave me a bunch of plants. So many plants that I had to get a ride home, because I couldn’t carry them all myself. One of those plants was a raspberry, or rather a clump of raspberries. They gave me some that were already more than a year old, so we could get fruit this year. 

I almost cried when they handed me that bush. 

To me, raspberries have become so tangled (a raspberry image, that) with my sense of identity, my sense of home, that this simple gift, this kind gesture, meant more than I could ever explain to them. 

I planted those bushes, and I watched them. Tried not to interfere. Watched as some leaves died, and one of the bushes died completely. Watched as the raspberries themselves formed. My wife still wasn’t sure they would bear edible berries, but this was enough for me. It had lived, it had taken root, and if not this year, next year it would flourish. 

But now I hold two raspberries. My own raspberries, picked myself, from my own bush, from my own yard.