Packages

My good friend Melodie sent me a package. In it was a jar of this year's blueberry jam, from the berries out in back of the the log house that her husband built and that they live in. She packed it in pretty paper and sprinkled dried flowers and sent it in a cloth-covered box. It made my week.



I picked her blueberries a few summers ago, took home four or five gallon freezer bags full. Stained my fingers and my mouth that day. Soe & I made up this great drink that had elderflower concentrate and vodka and seltzer and mint and blueberries floating in it. We would cook down frozen blueberries with maple syrup on low during dinner and drizzle it over ice-cream for dessert.

I met Melodie the summer before my senior year of high school, at music camp. I think we got on so well because we were both troublemakers, we loved adventure. And music, and nature. We took baths in the river. Got all the other girls together and went out into a field one night, lay down in the cool grass with all our heads in a circle facing in, sang songs and looked out into the universe. I remember feeling the gravity holding me onto the planet, and fully realizing that that was the only thing that kept me here, separate from those bright Vermont Country stars. It's unsettling, to let yourself feel gravity, especially on a starry night laying down.

Later that summer, she drove up north to get me and took me back to Waitsfield with her. It must have been August, because I remember her brother taking us up to the top of a mountain in his VW bus to watch the meteor showers. And drinking vodka mixed with grape soda. She tried to get me into this bar that she went to all the time, but I didn't look as old as she did. (Back then this was a true curse, I was forever waiting outside of bars while my friends were inside having fun.) And we hitchhiked from one town to the next, her butterfly knife tucked safely into her boot, we'd been practicing. Smoking cigarettes like it was our job. Always looking for the next adventure. Her boyfriend and her brother were drummers, and they made their drums. Their hands were like wood, so calloused. We would have bonfires and dance and dance all night. And gin rummy. All night long. All of her friends were so wonderful, as if to know Melodie was to be touched by magic, to see all of your cares and troubles float away on wafts of incense smoke, with the true knowledge that everything that you need is provided. By nature and the people around you. Do you need water? There's a brook in the back. Hungry? Here's an apple tree, and my friend is making tofu scramble with cumin cumin cumin! There's a party tonight, we don't have a car and it's four towns over. Don't worry, we'll get there! And we would.

For a while, Melodie lived in a little cabin in the woods with a poet. No electricity, and an outhouse in the back. They kept their food cold in a cooler during the summer, in a snowbank in the winter. She made salves and oils and bath salts in the pantry. There were flowers everywhere. It was like a dream.

Many years later, Melodie married her high school sweetheart, Dave, (the one from before I met her, I recognised him from the "Wild West" picture she'd shown me once), on a mountaintop under an arch woven with flowers that he made for her. And they moved into the house that he built, a house of logs, on a hill, with blueberries growing in the back, and a rough trail going up to a little field with a cabin. On Dave's birthday a few years ago, she bought him this monster jeep/truck/tractor thing and had a party. Eventually, people started driving the behemoth up & down the muddy trail. The gas tank was in the bed of the truck, and it sounded like, I can't describe it. Loud, and old, and diesel-driven. I had just learned to drive a stick shift, and Dave got it in his head that I should drive the truck up the hill. So I did. It was frightening, to say the least. There were times when the trail was so steep, I thought we would roll over backwards. There were times when the mud was so deep, I was sure we were stuck. And, it was night. But finally, I got it up the hill. I turned it around and started the descent. Something snapped. The axle broke. I still feel like I broke that truck.

I called Melodie to thank her for the package, and our conversation circled around very adult things. She was doing their taxes. We started talking about the economy and this whole Wall Street bailout. I said "people like you won't be affected too much by this". And she said she's obsessed with paying off the mortgage. And everyone around her is worried. I realised today that I've had a tendency to romanticise her life. That I've always kind of pictured her in this idyllic haze, living off the land like a fairy queen. But she's living in the same world as I am, the same country, the same worries, concerns.

In spite of my fantasy of her, the one thing that is impossible to romanticize is friendship. For some reason, we came together in life, and time and distance have never been able to sever the bond that we wove on that wonderful summer in Vermont. I hadn't talked to her in almost two years when we reconnected this time, and it seemed like a month at the most. I am so very grateful for this friendship. It reminds me of who I am, and where I come from. And it inspires me to be a better friend, to send packages for no reason, because they make smiles and warm hearts.

2008 Showacre Blueberry Jam: spoon on top of coconut sorbet for an amazing treat...
or, mix into plain yogurt with maple syrup for something incomparable, and addictive...
or, spread onto warm toast with butter for a traditional comfort...