What I Ate Friday, October 8th, 2021: Fresh Raspberries From Ollie’s School’s Tree

Last Friday, when we picked Ollie up from school, he asked us to go into the school’s garden with him, and encouraged us to eat any of the produce we found there. We questioned the validity — was he really supposed to eat anything he found, and to urge others to eat it all as well? It’s not his food. It’s the school’s food. But…he goes to the school. We are the parents of a child that goes to the school. Furthermore, the only creatures I have direct evidence of eating the food are the squirrels and bugs nearby. If we don’t eat it, who will? If we don’t eat it, it will rot. If we don’t eat it, what am I saying to him? Am I saying this isn’t for us? Am I saying your body can have Cheetos at home but not fresh raspberries hanging from these leaves? Why would I say this? Because I don’t believe it’s for him or I don’t believe it’s for me? — It’s allowance. Right? It’s all about allowance. What we allow ourselves to have, in the way of food. What we allow ourselves based on what we believe about ourselves. Fighting against it. Fighting for it. Fighting for the allowance to believe you were meant to be bathed in sunlight, your hands open, your fingers poised, pulling off the fruit of the land. That you were meant to eat here because you were meant to be here. That you were meant to eat here because you are.

I gave in slowly. I let my hand graze over the little pin cushion bubbles of the raspberry’s surface. I let my hand consider it, first. Consider the taking. I listened as Ollie’s voice rose up behind me. Try one, Mom! They’re great!

And — let me tell you what happened — once I started, I could not stop. Then, as I continued eating, I started voicing the joy of the find and the burst of the sweetness and the thrill of the hunt, all of which increased Ollie’s vigor in the event. MAN, THEY’RE SWEET! he exclaimed — OH MY GOSH, I FOUND A WHOLE TREAUSRE OF THEM! He ran, yelling, through the bushes, COME QUICK MOM, I FOUND EVEN BETTER ONES over and over and over again. We fed each other. We fed each other’s energy as we fed ourselves. It wasn’t the raspberries that were amazing. It was what we did when we engaged with each other in the act of eating them.

Nic stood by. You could tell he was uncomfortable. He wasn’t sure we should be there, wasn’t sure we should eat the berries. I let him stand for a good while before I encouraged him to eat a berry. Try one, Nic! They’re sweet! They’re good! I ramped up like Ollie had ramped for me, but Nic wasn’t biting.

Meanwhile, Ollie and I gorged ourselves. The raspberries were plentiful and ripe. They needed so light a tug to fall from the tree. It was like they were literally asking us to be eaten. Like they were waiting for us as much as we were waiting for them. Like it was a symbiotic relationship.

**

It’s Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month. For the last decade or so, I’ve been trying to figure out how brown I am. I don’t look brown. But the first time I ever left the country and went to Costa Rica, the people there spoke to me in Spanish like they expected me to speak it back. They didn’t attempt English with me until I proved I couldn’t communicate well enough in my mother’s mother tongue.

You could say I am not brown. But I am my mother’s daughter, and I inherited part of her skin and a lot of her sadness. I inherited parts of her trauma. Symbiosis. She was a brown woman living in a white world, and there is no way she walked through that unscathed.

I have blonde hair now. I like it a lot but I don’t dye it because I like it blonde. I dye it because my hair is so thin that when it’s brown you can see my white head shining through it, and I became ashamed. Now, I’m ashamed that you can’t see my mother’s hair on my head anymore. There is shame, no matter what.

**

I took a run with the Peloton app this morning. The trainer who was the guide for the run spoke about her heritage; told us about her parents and their struggles in the United States. She said that she is proud to be Puerto Ricena and proud to be Cubana and super proud to be Latina.

I recoil every time I hear someone say they are proud to be — essentially — just whatever they were born. To be the person they were born. Or to be born where they were born. I have never felt proud to be anything. I have only felt ashamed of who I am, and where I’m from.

Did my mom do that? Did I soak up something she held in herself? Or did I do that to myself?

**

I should have made Nic eat a raspberry. Actually, I should have made him eat seven to ten of them. I should have made him eat until the shame he felt of partaking of them was less than, or erased, by the shame he would feel not partaking of them.

**

I am worried about all the transference, you know. My anger to Ollie, his frustration back to me — nevermind Nic’s (often lifesaving but often not) apathy. I am worried about the symbiosis. My mom was me and I, she. He is me; I am Ollie. And yet, we are separate. We are running in circles, and cycles, of emotion and generational patterns and we will not come out unscathed.

May these moments of sharing energy and food be our joy. A union. A steeple, we make together — where we eat, alongside each other. May the symbiosis be as beneficial as sacrificial. May I never take five whole minutes of urging to grab something off a tree again. My son knew he was meant to eat them. My son told me these things were for me.