Grandma's Blackberry Jam

          In the heat of one of my adolescent summers, I made a solo visit to my paternal grandparents in Forest, MS.  One of the highlights of every Forest trip was going out to Deck’s farm to fish in the pond, to ride the horses and, if we hit the season right, to help bale hay.  Deck was a distant cousin who raised beef cattle on the gently rolling hills just outside town.  A sheer and constant delight, Deck epitomized the farmer persona.  He loved his farm, his cows, his neighbors, and he wore one of the broadest, most genuine smiles I have ever seen. 

          One morning during my visit, Grandpa decided that he and I were going to go pick blackberries out on the farm.  Before heading out to pick, we stopped by Deck’s simple red brick house.  He met us outside so his zealously protective border collie, Blaze, didn’t try to chew our trespassing legs to shreds.  We stood around the bed of Deck’s dingy green Chevrolet pickup, our elbows perched on the bed.  It was summer.  The day would be long and hot.  The morning air, thick with dew, lay moist against our skin.  There was no need to hurry.

          In his slow, garbled drawl, Deck said he had a tree to saw up not far from the blackberry bramble, and that if I wanted to come with him I could.  Before I could respond, Grandpa thanked him but declined the invitation for me.  As Grandpa drove us down through a pasture to the dense, sprawling blackberry thicket nestled in a patch of bottom land, I could think of only Deck and his chainsaw.

          As we started picking, Deck cranked up his saw and began his work.  As the sun rose higher, so did the temperature.  Flies and gnats feasted on us.  Hypodermic briars sliced my fingers, hands and forearms.  For a 13 year old boy, the choice between picking blackberries and hanging around a kindly old farmer with a chainsaw was a no-brainer, so I decided to venture out on a limb and take Deck up on his offer on my own. 

          Grandpa did not care for the idea.

          “You know,” he said, “there are stories about people getting lost in the woods and surviving on wild berries like this.  It’s important to get a feel for such things.” 

          The only thing lost that day was my mind in the high whine of Deck’s chainsaw.  So I mumbled some excuse and walked off to hitch my wagon to Deck and his chainsaw.

          When the berries were picked and the tree cut into firewood, Grandpa came to get me, and we returned to town.

          That afternoon, I lay down on the thick carpet in Grandpa's and Grandma's living room, reveling in the cool wash of the ceiling fan.  The air itself was awash in the sweet aroma of blackberries cooking down into jam in Grandma’s kitchen.

          The next morning when I came to breakfast, there, beside a stack of golden brown toast, sat a jar of store-bought grape jelly.

          “How about some of that blackberry jam?” I said.

          “Gotta save that for the winter,” Grandpa answered into crackle of his paper.

          I was stunned.  “Well, it sure would taste good,” I whimpered

          “Nooo,” Grandpa said.  “We need to save that for those cold winter mornings.”

          I knew better than to push any further.

          At the end of the week, my grandparents and I packed up for the long drive back home to Augusta, GA.  They stayed with us for a couple of nights, and we had a grand time, as usual.  After they left, my mother came into my room holding a small jar.  It contained something dark and purple, with tiny round seeds in it.

          “Grandma brought this for you,” Mom said.  “She said that Grandpa thought only those who picked the berries should eat the jam.  But she wanted you to have some, too.”

          Grandma had smuggled me a jar of her blackberry jam.

          The grace of God may have no greater witness among us than the love of grandmothers.  What mattered to Grandma was not what she thought I had or had not earned.  What mattered was what she thought of her grandson.  Her thoughts were always guided and shaped by unconditional love.  Even if she had to sneak it our way on occasion, she was going to follow the path of grace, that high-set light which cannot be hidden.

          Thanks be to God for Grandma, for grandmothers, and for their many jars of smuggled grace.*

*An earlier version of this story appeared in the July/August 2006 issue of an Upper Room publication called "Alive Now."  (Laura Huff Hileman, guest editor; pp. 20-22)