“Grandma's Blackberry Jam”

By Allen Huff

In the heat of one of my adolescent summers, I made a solo visit to my paternal grandparents in Forest, Mississippi.

One morning Grandpa decided to take me blackberry picking at his cousin's farm. Before heading out to pick, we stopped by Deck's simple red brick house. A sheer and constant delight, Deck epitomized the farmer persona. He loved his farm, his cows, his neighbors, and he wore one of the broadest, most genuine smiles I have ever seen. In his slow, garbled farmer drawl, Deck said he had a tree to saw up not far from the blackberry bramble, and that if I wanted to come with him I could. Now be it business or pleasure, Grandpa never wavered in his principles. So before I could respond, he thanked Deck but declined the invitation for me. Driving down through a pasture to the dense, sprawling blackberry bramble nestled in a patch of bottom land, I could think of only Deck and his chain saw.

As we started picking, Deck cranked up his saw and began his work. The sun climbed higher and so did the temperature. Flies and gnats feasted on us. Hypodermic briars sliced my fingers, hands, and forearms. For a thirteen-year-old, the choice between picking blackberries with my formidable grandfather and hanging around a kindly old farmer with a chain saw was a no-brainer. Setting down my bucket, I said I'd just go see if Deck needed some help.

Grandpa did not care for the idea.

"You know," he said, "there are stories about people getting lost in the woods and surviving on wild berries like this. It's important to get a feel for such things."

The only thing lost that day was my mind in the high whine of Deck's chainsaw. So I mumbled some excuse and walked off to join the real action.

That afternoon, I lay on the cool living room carpet breathing in the sweet, steaming aroma of blackberries cooking down to jam in Grandma's kitchen. It was all I could do to keep from drooling.

The next morning when I came to breakfast, there, beside a stack of golden brown toast, sat a jar of grocery-store jelly.

"How about some of that blackberry jam?" I said.

"Gotta save that for the winter," Grandpa answered into his newspaper.

Stunned, I whimpered, "Well, it sure would taste good."

"Nooo," Grandpa said. "Need to save that for those cold winter mornings."

I knew better than to push any further.

At the end of the week, my grandparents and I packed up for the long drive home where they stayed with us for a couple of nights. After they left, my mother came into my room holding a small jar. It contained something dark and purple with small round seeds in it.

"Grandma brought this for you," Mom said. "She said that Grandpa thought only those who picked the berries should eat the jam. But she wanted you to have some, too."

I could not believe what I held in my undeserving hands. Grandma had smuggled me a jar of her blackberry jam!

The grace of God may have no greater witness among us than the love of grandmothers. What mattered to Grandma was not what she thought I had earned, but simply what she thought of her grandson. And her thoughts were always guided and shaped by unconditional love. Even if she had to resort to subversive and covert operations, she was going to follow the path of grace, that high-set light which cannot be hidden. How often she must have done that I can only imagine.

Thanks be to God for Grandma, for grandmothers, and for their many jars of smuggled grace.

Allen Huff serves as associate pastor at Shelby Presbyterian Church in Shelby, North Carolina. He and his wife, Marianne, have two teenaged children, Ben and Elizabeth.