A Year of Gratitude – August 23, 2024

I found my gratitude in the tiniest of berries today. This is a schwatzenberry, at least that’s what my grandparents called it. So, that’s how I know it. So much of the wonder of my childhood is held in this little berry.

You might know this berry as schwatzenbeeren, schwatzenberren, or wonder berries. They’re an edible member of the nightshade family. In the case of my grandparents, they lived in a part of Kansas that had become home to immigrants from the Volga region of Germany. They brought the tiny seeds for these berries with them. They planted them, and well, the rest is part of my family history.

I grew up thinking that everyone knew this berry. In the part of Kansas where my grandparents lived, you would find these berries in pies and coffee cakes at their local grocery stores. They were as common as blueberries are at my New England area local stores are now.

These berries were special to me because they were something we only had at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. My grandmother made pies with these dark purple berries thickened with tapioca. Those pies are one of the most vivid food memories from my childhood. Every bite seemed to be held together with my grandmother’s love. You could just feel it wrap around you when you were sitting at her kitchen table eating a slice of pie.

When my children were small, we planted a few of these from seed. The birds love them, so with their help, they are seeded into new spots in the garden and come back each year. This year, we seem to have been blessed with a bumper crop of them.

These berries are tiny, around the size of a currant. It takes so many of them to make a single pie. That was a fact that escaped me as a child. I thought Grandma just magically always had enough berries to make pies with. I know now that she picked every little berry by hand, tenderly to avoid crushing their delicate skin, before amassing enough of them to fill a pie.

Because these berries are so small, they are even more precious. We pick them and store them in the freezer until there are enough berries for a pie (or hopefully two). Then I make a pie and we relish each bite knowing that there will only be one or two of them until the next season comes around.

When I saw that these little berries were ripe and ready to be picked, I felt gratitude wash over me. My heart filled with love at the memory of my grandmother and her pies. It danced with joy at the knowledge that my children know her through my stories about her and the schwatzenberry pies I have made.

These berries could have been added to the freezer stash, but I pulled them gently from the vine and popped them directly into my mouth. As I tasted their unique, almost vegetal flavor, I smiled and thought about how much of the good of my life was wrapped up in these little berries. Life, like these tiny gems, is precious and should be enjoyed right now, saved for the future, and hopefully shared with someone you love over a piece of good pie.

This post is part of our A Year of Gratitude Series. You can find the introduction, inspiration, and entire year’s gratitude’s posts here.