When I was a child I remember playing in the backyard for hours in the summer. I remember thinking that my yard was as big as a Provincial Park when in fact, having returned to my childhood home the yard is rather small. We had all manner of fruit trees growing; apple, cherry, pear. plum and mulberry trees. The mulberry trees used to drop fruit all about the lawn and being children we often ran barefoot. Our feet were forever stained all shades of blue and purple. The sharp sweet taste of the mulberries takes me instantly back to being six years old running through the sprinkler with little blue feet.

Yesterday, I was in my backyard and on the ground I spotted a little purple berry. I reached down and picked it up - low and behold...a mulberry. I tentatively glanced around (wouldn’t want anyone to see me eat something off of the ground) and popped it into my mouth. I savoured the taste of childhood with my eyes closed and a warm breeze encircled me like an embrace. A little smile crept across my face and I glanced up... my own mulberry tree. Maybe being a grown up isn’t so bad all of time.