No matter where I am, no matter how old I am, whenever I see mulberries I think of home.
The story began 50 years ago. As a child, I had lots of time for leisure activities. I climbed trees to pick fruit, played baseball and played marbles. But picking mulberries is the thing I remember most. Why? Because it was a chance for me, my cousins and my neighbors to get closer and share secrets and dreams.
When we climbed up the tree, we picked not only the mulberry fruit, but also the leaves, which were the main food for my pets, silkworms. This made climbing the tree to pick mulberries very significant for me.
Every month, my cousins and I would designate a day as Mulberry Gathering Day. Before then, we would prepare a basin with clean water in it. After everyone put the mulberries they picked in the basin, we would soak and rinse them. After five minutes, we drained the water, poured out some brown sugar, and mixed it with the mulberries. Then it was time for everyone to enjoy the sweet and sour mulberries. We lay on the sand in the yard, watching the ever-changing clouds in the sky, eating mulberries and sharing good and bad things: our life at school, our dreams about the future.
We chatted all afternoon. The more we talked, the clearer our dreams seemed to be. And the relationship between my cousins and me became more harmonious, too.
As for the mulberry leaves, I wiped them dry and fed the hungry silkworms. After a few years, my dad built another house in the yard, so he cut the mulberry tree down.
Today, very few children in the city can enjoy climbing trees to pick fruit in the yard as I did when I was small. But the sweet and sour taste of the mulberries will remain in my heart forever. It always makes me think of home.
— By William Liu
