Excerpt: Bloom

“Completely cover three pounds of ripe strawberries with water and set in a cool place for 24 hours. Drain off the liquid and pour over three more pounds of fresh strawberries and let set for 24 hours. Drain liquid away without crushing the berries and to the liquid add its own weight in honey. Boil three to four minutes in an enamel pan. When cool, bottle and cork loosely for three days, then close tightly and seal. Store in a cool, dry place but where it cannot freeze. Delicious served with ice water.” – from In the Kitchen by Elizabeth Smith Miller

It seemed a simple matter at the time. Strawberries were fast becoming the popular product in Madison County and more were raised for sale in our country here than almost anywhere else, I heard. Small patches expanded to long rows with suckers reaching out yet farther.
So this is how it has been with me, something basic and ordinary, just a woman, but one with a true appreciation for what is good that Our Lord has given to us. Alas still just a woman.
But anyone or thing has the ability, like a pebble tossed into a pond, to make a great series of ripples. Any one strawberry plant can send out shoots and beget new plants and fruits. Even after the field has been plowed under, fruit may yet appear long after the original plants existed.
And yet, my plants in the garden off the kitchen were no different. So it wasn’t a matter of coaxing them to thrive as it was more an issue of containing them or rather, providing direction.
This was no easy task. Oh, the plants themselves, when given the proper attention, were compliant enough. It was my own procrastination to get out and wrestle with the little monsters that started the trouble. You see, neglect does not necessarily improve a difficult situation. But my voluminous skirts and the layers of fabric within provided an even greater challenge and I decided to attack the skirts rather than my own foot dragging. The unruly plants themselves ran a close second in my blame.
Strawberries are very unlike wild blackberries, which conveniently make themselves available on a bush at the height of your waist. They are low growing things and their shoots tend to intertwine into a web along the ground in every direction between plants and any rows you set to manage them.
Sure footed as I normally am, with my sturdy every day shoes, one cannot prevent a fall, when one cannot see their feet. Indeed, reaching down to disentangle a foot often led to precarious situation for finding anything below the waist, even something as simple as a pair feet, was a considerable challenge given the layers of skirt upon petticoat, upon chemise, upon who knows what else.
I stood looking unhappily at the patch while the boys ran about the grounds. My original plan was to allow them this play time in the warm June air while I tended the garden. The baby was tucked in for his afternoon nap, so the house would be quiet for him.
“Stay away from my berries!” I called to Gerrit, who was six at the time. I may not have been eager to deal with the tangled crop, but neither did I want to treat stubborn strawberry stains from their clothing. I did however envision the rather lovely strawberry acid punch I could make when the dreary winter needed a little taste of sweet sunshine.
“Why? We never even eat the berries because you tell us you need to straighten them out and then you don’t do the straightening.” I knew that the fresh sounding comment on the surface indicated a plain observation seen through the eyes of a child.
“Can we pick some, Mama?” four-year-old Charley called back.
“No, I have to …” I started, “Oh, go ahead.” I gave in sitting down on the cool stone steps that led to my garden. I instead spent the next hour helping the boys extract the easiest reached fruits and flinging the little scalloped strawberry caps over the fence and in the end I could see the pretty pink blooms of stains growing down the front of their shirts.
When Willy’s inevitable wail announcing his awakening reached us from the window upstairs of the cottage, I told the boys to go in and put fresh shirts on so that we could take a walk.
I trudged along the dirt road into town with Willy on my hip and the boys dashing in and out of the foliage along side the road. They had found sticks and were whooping and hollering as Indians out for the hunt. Every so often, although it seemed to be less and less, representatives from the Oneida tribe would visit the mansion. Due to grandfather’s negotiations with them, a great amount of land was turned over to us and it had become tradition to thank them with gifts of clothing and food.
I could use a squaw’s cradle board right now, I thought, as I shifted my robust boy from one hip to the other. Occasionally, the Oneida women would accompany the men on these visits to Peterboro. A strange and interesting culture these native peoples, I thought. While we much more frequently saw the men set out to hunting or trading, my father said that the women control the family and tribal structures, as well as the farming. I scowled at the task of the strawberries I was working so hard to avoid.
At one year’s visit when I was still a girl, I spied two squaws sitting beneath one of the poplars outside the mansion. This is when I noticed the cradle board, a much more practical way of toting little ones about. Although we owned a pram, they are more or less useless crossing the rough dirt roads that are rutted from our frequent rainfall in the New York countryside.
The ease at which this squaw swung her little golden baby down from her back made an impression on me. After handing the child to her companion, she quite casually plopped herself down on a large exposed tree root, lifted her overdress and took back the baby for feeding. Of course, nothing questionable was exposed from where I watched through the window of the dining room. Besides, the leggings she wore hid her bent legs covering any potential of this from my curious view. The leggings appeared to be made of a blue stoutcloth and were strapped just above the knee and fell in an inverted “v” to the top of her pliable leather moccasins.
I called Gerrit and Charley out of the brush so that we could cross to the long, rectangular green that stretched from west to east. As we passed the land office and the mansion on the left, the boys held their sticks along the glossy black iron fence making a clacking commotion all the way. A carriage veered into the green as it passed when the driver’s horses became annoyed at the sharp drumming. I waved over my shoulder to Aunt Betsy who was supervising a servant girl in the beating of carpets off to the side of the mansion. She stepped back from the little cloud of dust to wipe her brow with one hand and return the wave with the other.
When we got to Hugh McWilliams’ place, I told the boys to play in the green while I went to talk to the tailor about the tiniest idea that was forming in my head.
“So, you want to become an Indian squaw,” said Hugh, quite seriously. I noticed a slightest smile at the corner of his mouth beneath his swooping mustache. “Have you notified Charles know about this?” he asked.
“Mr. McWilliams,” I said, “I can assure you that if I chose to be an Indian chief, I would gain my husband’s full support.” I wasn’t quite certain of this, but wanting so much not to be ridiculed, I glared at him straight in the eye even though the twinkle of mirth was beginning to make its way to the corners there as well.
“It would seem to me, Libby, that if that were they case, then your husband himself might be looking at a different career,” he said lifting a bolt of muslin down from a high shelf.
“Mr. McWilliams, you are the village tailor, are you not? Then I’m certain, you will not turn away any business in these uncertain times.” I said. “A lady’s frock, just as always, with the addition of a covering for the legs.”
Hugh’s cheeks began to redden slightly at the mention of a lady’s lower half of the anatomy. Overhearing the conversation and sensing some sympathy for my losing part in the discussion and slightly more frugal than her spouse, Mary stepped in to the storefront to greet me.
Wiping her hands on the front of her cooking apron, she said, “These coverings would only add to the cumbersome layers, Libby, unless you do something else with the skirts. I think this might take a little time to consider and the costs should be commensurate.”
“Precisely and of course,” I said with relief that someone exhibited a bit of understanding, “I want something like that which the ladies in Turkey wear. A pantaloon ... with a shortened skirt.”
Hugh studied the gaps between the wood planks of the floor and slowly shook his head. He was, essentially, outnumbered. I took my leave and collected the boys from the green before stopping back at the land office so they could visit their grandfather.
So this one impracticality of dress led to one practical idea. And this idea, although it caused quite a lot of comment and controversy, made ripples on the small body of water that was my world at the time.