Raspberries

A few classes ago, Dr. Sexson was talking about how smell and taste could spur epiphanic moments, and he looked right me and mentioned the idea of me playing in a raspberry batch in my grandparent's backyard. Immediately, memories flooded my mind. On the Mason side of my family, my grandparents lived in a town called Darien, CT. They had a cute, little clapboard New England-esque home, and the yard was manicured neatly. In the backyard there was a garden. Along the walkway were 'money plants,' and I don't know if that's actually what they were called, but they had these flat pods that grew on them, and inside were little disks. Imagine a bean pod if it were flattened (not crushed!). My sister and I were forced to amuse ourselves when we were in CT because my father was an only child, and we didn't have cousins to play with, so we came up with a little game.

Using the 'money' that came from the money plants, a person would pay the toll to enter the raspberry patch. This patch was gorgeous. Tall hedges that were as tamed as they could be wound in an crescent shape. On one of the sides there was a beautiful wrought iron bench that were would play on. Now grandma and grandpa didn't want us to pick all of the raspberries, so they added to our little game and said that we had to have enough 'money' for the ones that we picked. It was one 'coin' for each raspberry, and if we didn't have enough then we had to give them to the grownups. 

Had Dr. Sexson not looked me in the eye and mentioned a raspberry patch in my grandparent's backyard, I would never had thought about it, but it stuck with me. It was like Erin recalling a childhood memory of her and Katey.