"We were berry picking . . ."

The combine out in the field watched our merry troupe walk up the road to the bushes simply bursting with chokecherries! The hills glowed blue that afternoon, and the wind, it blew cool, like when you're expecting autumn . . . 

Buckets on our arms and branches full of purple and red diamonds, all up and down the line there's the sounds---plunkplunkplunk of a handful of berries dropping in the bottom of the bucket. The gems rolling against one another.

There's a windlook: gazing into the wind when it blows, to catch the scenes of "olden day" times when everyone would make a day of it. Gather their families and go pick berries! Anywhere! And have fun doing it, because it was work, and they were doing it together, for a greater purpose!

Look how many there are! We have only ever picked from these bushes once since we've lived here. The birds have always gotten to them before they ripened. Those branches are simply loaded with goodness!

We sang songs. Songs we all knew. Songs from Sunday School, the ones you always sing, no matter where you go to church.

"I'm in, right up, right down, right happy all the time . . . Since Jesus Christ came in and cleansed my heart from sin, I'm in, right up, right down, right happy all the time!"

Songs like "Zachaeus was a wee little man . . ." and how he climbed up in a sycamore tree to see Jesus pass by.

We sang "Oh, where have you been, Billy Boy, Billy Boy? Oh, where have you been charming, Billy?" Like Sarah did with Anna and Caleb in Kansas, on a summer day, not unlike that one. I wish I had remembered to sing "Sumer is Icumen in", too.

Mama's bucket got full first. Expert berry picker there! We're all enjoying the fruits of our labor, for Mama has a whole cupboard shelf full of syrup and jelly. You must come visit us when we have some vanilla ice cream handy. You have not enjoyed the prairies or the hills to the fullest until you have had chokecherry syrup over vanilla ice cream!

I wish there was more to tell you about that day . . . but nothing it blindingly urgent, needing to be said. Mama left with the boys first, I put my bucket in the back of the suburban, and the sisters stayed awhile longer. I captured the fields, the hills, them, the wind. No, there's nothing too exciting to tell you . . .

. . . except that we were together. As we love to be. We were all there. Our minds not on faraway things. Just the picking, the berries, real diamonds to us. Jewels of the prairies where we live. We loved the wind. No one knows, but prairie wind makes your hair soft. No, we were just---together. Just there. But I will tell you, being there---just together, it doesn't happen as often as it used to since we're all grown up and have our jobs. And being together, it is old times again. Being together, it doesn't mean we're care free. Just that when we are together, our cares are looked after by one another.

That's what is startlingly wonderful about that day. It was a day you felt loved in.