While the Scones Were Baking

She thought about the scones that were baking, how they seemed so messy, messier than the first time she made them all those months ago.  The dyed batter, streaked with the heat of a Missouri summer, sizzled on the pan reminding her that her butter was not cut into Saturday's breakfast in the most thorough of ways.

She smiled, remembering the gathering, the parting of the leaves, the morning sun turning to a fire that poured sweat out of all those brave enough to bear its love for fruit of the same.  She remembered the first time she went blackberrying, or the first of the times wherein she went every year, and she had a stroller at her side.  Bumping through the rows, little hands underfoot helping, her own hands pointing and gently reminding them how the ripe ones looked.  That middle child with her laughter and chubby fingers, the oldest inspecting carefully the berries and running swift through the grass.  

I sat on a bench that first day and nursed the baby while the other two went swinging into the blinding light.  Every time they swing, I say it, louder some times than others, "How would you like to go up in a swing, up in the sky so blue...oh don't you think it the pleasantest thing ever a child can do?"

I think I probably chanted it to the baby, her little eyes closed, and never dreamed how fast her little hands would  unfurl.  Never did I think I would be the one to walk down the aisles alone while the children ran to their own rows, up to the blueberries, to the car for water, and back again.  Never did I imagine that these scones, streaked with love and traditions of years gone by, would be the fruit of years of dreaming.

The oven beeped and she saw that mess had faded into breakfast.  The berries stood hot against the dough, the mess of the morning now baked into something sweet and beautiful.

And she dreams again.  

Of another blackberrying day, of future scones, and of messes redeemed.