The Promise of the Wishberry

Seasons come and seasons go.

The sun rises and sets.

Come sit by me. Let’s talk.

Let’s talk long and deep and about the certainties of life…

like the certainty of the promise of the wishberry.

She asked why she had to grow up so fast.

I don’t know sweet one, I don’t know.

But adventures await. And there is a plan and a purpose.

Several years ago, when she still played dress up and lined her little ponies across the back porch, I wrote this about an observation we had together.

Maybe you’ll enjoy it too…if you find yourself longing for Spring

and the promise of the wishberry.

 On a damp and cold and dreary Spring day, when winter had solidly worn out his welcome, she asked,

“When do you ever think we will see those yellow flowers again?”

 I said, “What yellow flowers?” 

??…yellow tulips…daffodils…?? 

Then with a contemplative tone in her voice, she said,

“Well, the only way I know to describe them is they are young wishberries!”

Then I knew!

Ah yes.

“young wishberries”

When she was just a tiny wisp of a child,

quiet and intuitive, hardly talking, she christened a dandelion puff

and called it “a wishberry”.

I’ve loved dandelion puffs, since I was a child.

Still, even now, I love seeing the seeds float, float away, on the wings of a fragile puff of air or the wind.

Once when I was in elementary school I found a huge dandelion puff with two stems grown together making a heart shaped wishberry puff much larger than I had ever seen

.And so began my fascination with wishberries.

Upon her pronouncement of calling them wishberries, so very aptly named, in my humble opinion, they became just that much more dear to me.

We’ve enjoyed wishberries together ever since and never fail to have a bouquet each Spring of “young wishberries” and violets. 

I perused the yard and I only found one actual wishberry. It wasn’t a perfectly round seed pod of puff and promise.

It was actually kind of small and tattered. It was battered by the wind and last night’s rain. But still the promises were there, in the seeds that waited to be released from their tiny station on the stem. 

Adventure awaits.

The seed held the promise for more young wishberries. The seeds will float, float away, still a part of their past, but becoming something new. 

There’s the promise of the wishberry.

I suppose life just isn’t life without it scattering and change and yet still there’s hope for regrowth and renewal .

When there is enough rain and wind and battering,

those seeds will loosen their grip and spread and there will be more yellow polka dots across the lawn.

 I see hope…in the promise of the wishberry. 

Don’t you?