5 Minute Freewrite: Three Grapes

“Come here, girls--I think I found some.”

Dad’s shadow moved across the parking lot in the fading evening light, a blue, familiar form sliding through an asphalt sea of gold-flecked lines. He led us up to the chain link fence that surrounded the property. The wrappers of snack cakes and cheap cigars were caught in the bottom few links of the fence among the unkempt grass, but all we could see was the hope that beneath his work-hardened hands, as he parted huge leaves, there would be treasure.

It was late in the season, we knew. But maybe, just maybe, there would be a few more.

“Well what do you know, just enough for all of us to have a bit. What a blessing, huh?”

We watched, enraptured, as he plucked a handful of wild grapes from their hiding place along the fence. The pale blue bloom that covered the surfaces of each fruit was like the frost that we knew would come to Ohio sooner than we would ever expect. We each cradled three grapes in our tiny hands, eager to eat them, but wanting them to last the long ride home.

But we couldn’t resist eating at least one on the way back to the truck. The sour skin made our eyes blink, but the cool, slippery-green pulp within was so sweet, and so wild, that it made the sort of memory we would remember as adults, decades later.

Image from: https://www.freeimages.com/photo/grapes-in-the-wild-1340946

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Thanks again to @mariannewest for running this challenge. This is actually a real memory I have from my childhood--whenever my dad would pick my sister and I up from our grandmother's apartment in the fall, we'd go hunting for wild grapes in the parking lot. Though if you eat too many of them unprocessed, you can get a stomach ache, there is nothing so sweet to me as those fading-sunlight memories with my dad in the evening. This is probably one of the reasons I forage for wild food as an adult!

If you haven't heard the rules to this challenge, check out the intro post here: https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/writers-or-wanna-be-writers-wanted-be-free-freewrite