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October 7th.
It’s been a month since I moved to my new host family and tomorrow I will
be moving again.
I am moving because of circumstances I will not publicly mention since I
rather saved the families’ privacy.
From all the things I will leave here – and I will undoubtedly miss – one
is a beautiful, tall and rich *mora* (Blackberry) tree. One of the
advantages of living in Macacú – besides the beautiful view of the Lagoa –
is the freedom from the pavement and the urban noise pollution, and the
fact that you can cultivate whatever you want since you leave basically in
a tropical forest.
Now is the fruit season so almost every day Ana harvests from 2 to 3
*plastic* bags full of blackberries so she can make the *dolce *(sweet)
that she likes to eat at *café de manhã* (Its basically 4 kilos of sugar
and half a kilo of *mora* haha but it’s really good). Since the first week,
she invited me to harvest blackberries with her and I enjoyed it.
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Picking moras from that tree signified I was helping in a way I was
contributing to the family; it meant challenges at times since some
blackberries were too high so I would pick them with the help of the stair;
but most importantly, it was a space in which I had to be present and
observe where were the juiciest and beautiful moras on the spot – sometimes
hidden – cautiously taking care of moving gently so other moras wouldn’t
fall, and actively trying to spot them on the floor if they had fallen. I
also had to save myself from mosquitoes’ bites and other kinds of unknown
insects.
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Performing this activity also allowed me to have a space outside the house
– and all the general screaming – that allowed me to think about the
beautiful act of grow, gather natural food just by your house; of the
magnificence of having a permanent home where you could know that, the next
day, you would had more blackberries to pick up, because the tree was yours
and the fruits were for you and otherwise no one would pick them.
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I saw the beauty of growing the fruit yourself instead of just going to the
supermarket and buying it. It was a very satisfying feeling to drink a
*mora* juice from the moras YOU picked up.
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I felt connected to nature and to myself while picking those moras. I felt
the love from the tree and grateful to it since, once in a long time, it
demonstrated that I don’t need money to eat a tasty *mora* juice, but that
instead, I just needed the patience to grow a tree and the will to stay in
one place and pick those moras.
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Now I would love to have a blackberry tree in my house, somewhere I would
be free to grow life and love. Of course, this life will happen after all
my years of traveling and adventure that will come. Before, I thought
perhaps that could be a way of living which I would never like to give up
but, as time passes, I do find the significance of staying in one place to
plant relationships, see them grow and be there by the time they should be
harvested.
I found the importance of permanence through a blackberry tree.
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