Some Small Gain

There's no great loss without some small gain.

I can hear the voices of my "elders"--those who have gone before me, especially the women in my family--saying these words, using them in a myriad of situations, bringing comfort and perspective in the face of tragedies big and small. I was reminded of these words today when we had our own--albeit minor--tragedy here.

Someone (something?) stole our grapes.

We have a wonderful old grapevine that faithfully produces luscious Concord grapes every year, and we had been keeping an eye on it in recent days as the grapes ripened. Fortunately, they weren't ripe during the time when we got our five bushels of peaches from a local orchard; one canning project at a time is plenty! But now the peaches have all been dealt with, and it was time to turn our attention to the grapes.

When my mother walked by the vine yesterday and checked them, she noticed that quite a few were gone from the eastern end of the vine; but lots more remained on the western side. Today, however, when she had gotten the old enamel bucket out of the cellar and a pair of clippers to cut the clusters off the vine, she walked to the grapevine and returned with this. Only this.

Out of all the gorgeous clusters that had been on the vine only a day or so ago, this was all that remained--hardly enough to cover the bottom of the bucket.

It was shocking, mysterious, and disappointing enough to make Josiah cry this morning when Mother came in and reported the news. He was finally consoled when she took him down to the cellar so he could see for himself that we still have lots of grape juice left from other years--27 quarts is what they counted. But we're left puzzled by the strange disappearance of our grapes. We don't know whether the culprit was of the winged or two-footed or four-footed variety. We've never had this problem before so there's nothing to go on in our investigation. Would squirrels or raccoons or possums climb up and consume the grapes so quickly? If it was birds, it must have been a whole flock of them to pull off such speedy destruction. And if it was a person--well, I just hate to think that it could have been that. Who would do that? When? And why?

So as we ponder our "great loss," we do give thanks for a "small gain": since the grapes are gone, we don't have to spend hours tediously pulling grapes off stems, washing them, and squeezing the juice out, then standing over a hot canner to preserve it. The project that my mother thought would occupy her week suddenly got erased from the to-do list. I wonder what she'll do with all her leisure time! :)