There are few pleasures better than a forkful of blueberry pancake. The crisp brown pattern on the surface. The juicy-hot delight of a blueberry, large enough to show through both sides, as it pops on my tongue. The crush and crunch of brown sugar, dissolving in the butter; dissolving my teeth. The sweet freedom of a bowl of brown sugar in the center of the table. 

My godmother and her children are over for a summer day in our pool, suddenly cut short by an unpredicted thunderstorm. Not a rough, scary, blow, but a distant, steady flash and peel above the low, gray clouds, which will keep us indoors for the afternoon. Later there will be Monopoly, but now there are pancakes by the platter. My mother must have been planning to feed an army, as my godparents have an “old-timey Catholic” sized crew more suited for baseball than basketball. Most of them are younger than me, however, with shorter arms, and smaller bellies. My mother is a generous hostess, and it’s still the nineteen-seventies, and the blueberries are in season. She keeps cooking, and on this day, I will attempt to eat my body weight in blueberry pancakes. I make no claim to an exact memory of this day, but I am certain that I ate a double digit number of pancakes, and that first digit might not have been a one. 

I can not eat a blueberry pancake at a restaurant; I have been ruined by my mother’s and her mother’s work. I had a plate of mulberry pancakes outside of Glacier National Park that was delicious, but it was also after three days in the backcountry, and hunger is the best spice. Noone else ever came close, and I’ve stopped kicking at that football. I’ll feast upon the memory of pancakes, and eat my hunger. 

PS – People who put syrup on blueberry pancakes are monsters. 

PPS – This is not my most cherished fruit-based story.