The Summer I Learned to Really See
It was a muggy(闷热)end-of-summer dog day in Missouri. I was preparing to go after the mail—about a mile's distance, through fields and forests, across a river, from our farmhouse, in which three generations of my family lived.
“Take the bucket with you,” my grandmother said, handing me the very familiar bucket.
“What for?” I asked, petulantly(使小性子). The berries had been picked, and it was too early for wild grapes, too late for roasting ears(穗).
“You'll find something to fill it with,” she said, her blue eyes sparkling with anticipation.
I didn't want to take the bucket. It would be a burden to me. Twice a day I'd carried a bucket for milking. With it I'd carried feed to the chickens, salt to the cows, sugar to the neighbors. I'd had enough with carrying with the bucket!
Nevertheless, I took the bucket. Halfway to the mailbox, I set it down beneath a pokeberry bush(胡桃树). I needn't carry it the whole way, I reasoned. There was no mail. When I got back to the bucket, I saw that a few ripe pokeberries had fallen into it. With childish ill humor, I picked off enough clusters(花串) to fill the bucket, even though I thought they were good for nothing.
“Aren't they just lovely!” Grandma exclaimed admiringly when I set them on the kitchen table. She squeezed out the juice of the berries and we used the lovely red ink to paint rings on our fingers and pen letters to distant cousins.
When I went to mail the letters the next day, Grandma again told me to take the bucket along. This time I carried the bucket a little farther than the previous day before setting it down. There was only a sale catalogue in the mail. When I got back to the bucket, I dropped it in. But I felt vaguely uncomfortable, remembering the pokeberries. I caught sight of a bunch of peppermint(薄荷) growing close to the path. Funny, I had passed it every day and never noticed it before. Peppermint just doesn't spring up overnight. I picked a bucketful, its fragrance seeming to cool the day. Grandma was pleased with the peppermint. She liked to chew it and make tea with it.
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The daily routine to take the bucket along was repeated for weeks, and I began to see more.
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One day when I went home, I didn't have anything in the bucket.
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