Flea market melee

I seem to be a cathartic blogger and will therefore follow this trend because , well it's what I do best really . As previously mentioned , I harbor a special affection for my maternal grandparents who took care ( and still do ) of my little sister and I , I feel that this is a result of the plethora of memories they created with me especially . I've mentioned my Appa before , but his wife (and my dear grandmother ) Ma has not been as present in these stories . 

Her hands have always been the hardest working and the softest to hold , they fed and nurtured my infant wiles and threatened to tell my mother ( but seldom did ) if we misbehaved . She is a seamstress and her hands created many dresses that mark milestones in my life . From the dress at my christening that draped  my newborn skin to the playsuits that were muddied . And most recently an exquisite dress for my sixteenth ... Something only she would know how to make because she's one of the few people who understand me . They all mark little stitches in my life , and her presence there . 

So , Ma used to sew lots of dresses and sell them at a Flea market on Sundays , a common anecdote of my father's is that on the day I was born ( my uncle who manned the stall that day ) they had never sold as much before . It is usually followed by jokes of my adventures in this flea market . For as long as I remember , I would wake up in the early hours of morning to go with my grandparents and watch the empty lot slowly rise into a little metropolis of tents and gazebos . I think memories of this time are most firmly illustrated by food , of the steam rising and filling the already humid air with a whirlwind of aroma . The chewy corn sprinkled with masala that always gave me a slight tummy ache but was a welcome treat , of the hot slap chips ( my father often jokes that I was bluffed by the chips to wake up so early) smothered in cheap ( but often the tastiest ) tomato sauce that was presented in a paper packet almost transparent with oil . And funnily enough , the umbrella shaped ice cream made by a lady who died long before I began to appreciate the delicate flavours  presented in her icy cones . It was a lime and strawberry that was my favorite , and I sometimes long for that old sensation . 

It was in flea markets where I first fell in love  with books . Appa used to buy me Archie comic books and copies of second hand books . My copy of Black Beauty was ( and for some reason I remember this with precise clarity )  purchased on the same day I was bought a baby doll who had a lemon knitted dress ( who you could feed and she peed water ) from an old flame-haired woman who had no front teeth . That and many books and Garfield comic books were bought from this woman and I still have them lurking in the shelves .  My love of books has extended throughout my life and in many ways I must thank those stalls with piles of books with yellowed pages . 

The reason I was reminded of these events was that today , I went to a craft flea market and saw all these things , almost unchanged ( just a different time and place ) . We need to revisit things more , the tiny things that could revive old joys ( and yes I do acknowledge that I've previously regretted losing some old joys but things like this always live on for me ) . To see the colours and hear the vendors offering you a good deal and the omnipresent music from a stall that stocks CD's no one listens to  . These are all the ingredients that make me smile . And they remind me of how special my Ma is to me , for taking me to the flea market . 

Mulberries and memories of springtime long past

You begin to realize you've started living , when you stop trying to find a life and let all the sensations flood in . Often losing yourself , then stopping to wonder where all the  time went , is the best way to find what really makes you happy . Our best way of gleaning this is really but looking at what makes time seem to fly by fastest and leaves you sad that your time spent doing something or being with someone  is over .

My childhood ( only recently passed ) is a kaleidoscope of memories that sweep me away to a time when nothing mattered more than feeling the mud between your toes and being a child who would hide among the flowers making up stories about the clouds. I will always be grateful that I was blessed to truly have an amazing childhood . And I put that down to my parents and maternal grandparents .

I was born  and raised in a humid green place ,  wedged between the sea and a crown of mountains that we would drive to in winter to see the tops go white with snow in the distance . My grandparents have a house near a river that also passes mine downstream , and growing up , I spent my days in the huge garden filled with more  herbs and vegetables than I care to recall but you could see this lazy brown river flowing past . I believe that the reason I'm such a tactile person is because I loved squelching in the moist dark soil ( with bright green gumboots ) while my Appa ( my mothers father who taught me to love stories and to love the beauty of Gods creation in nature and animals , well in his own way ) went about planting mint and collecting mangoes from the heavy trees . My soul began to thread together under a canopy of trees and vines of bean plants that were rich with red and pink jewels in the shells .

One of my fondest memories are of picking the tiny flowers of pea plants and of the yellow mustard plants that stood tall . It saddens me that now , the flowers that bring me joy are not those simple blooms that are not presumptuous or found in bouquets at the florists .  That I used to find butterflies more beautiful than any dress , or that eating a mango with the sticky juice running down my arm  used to be my greatest ecstasy , makes me  realize just how much has changed.  That the mulberries I used to eat in wild abandon now posed something else , much more sinister .

The ancient Greek tale of Pyramus and Thisbe was said to be William Shakespeare's inspiration for Romeo and Juliet , a tale of two star crossed lovers who died at the base of a mulberry tree , staining the white berries to red and then black . Such a romance was cast over this simple berry , a mystic feeling that the bookworm in me craved  . That and the lure of silkworms as a seven year old . I had a shoebox of ten silkworms that I nurtured and spoke to until they receded into golden cocoons . I cried when I released them back into the mulberry tree ( note I had bought them at school ) , watching the fat moths flutter into an uncertain world so unlike the warm shoebox . All this became little threads I associated with childhood . Of collecting ripened mulberries until my fingers were stained purple and the finger marks on my clothes were left to stain . I had a white cotton handkerchief ( you know , those little fabric squares people used , and yes this is me patronizing you ) with yellow flowers embroidered in the corner . I used to squeeze the juice of the berries to dye it in a rudimentary manner for a few weeks . Watching the purple fade to indigo and eventually a sky blue.

The point of all this is that I didn't realize my cocoon had broken until yesterday , when I spent all morning writhing on the carpet with stomach pain that could only be explained by the large glass of blended mulberries .  I had red mulberry poisoning , apparently . Where I had eaten too many unripened red berries ( the sap is slightly toxic , but not too much ) and it a moment of realization that eventually the things that made you happy once , cease .

No longer did the sun kissed berries hold the magic of before , they were not as sweet , and the stain on my fingers no longer bright . All that was left was a memory of a robins egg -blue hanky . But the little bird has long since flown away...











Springtime was marked by the blooming of all the flowers and the arrival of berries . Strawberries , blueberries but especially ( and most beloved ) mulberries . There are many trees in the area , and three outside our house , and every spring they became heavy with the white and pink berries that were too young and sour to eat , the red berries that were tart but edible if you felt brave ... Lastly  the ripened purple berries that stained your fingers and lips with a color more red than any lipstick I will ever possess .

Today , after church , we drove in and I noticed ( after a long time ) that the tree was more red than green leaves .  A cloud of joy reminiscent of  infancy  descended as my  velvet covered pumps roamed through the ground covered in dark berries that glistened in the dappled sunlight .