HERE WE GO 'ROUND THE MULBERRY TREE: THE TORNADO ON WILBRAHAM MOUNTAIN

Our white mulberry tree, June 2, 2011

"Here we go 'round the mulberry tree . . . " sang the winds of the tornado on Wilbraham Mountain, as they danced around our ancient mulberry tree. "But we were only playing," wailed the tornado, as the mulberry tree crashed to the ground.

On Memorial Day, 2011, the white mulberry tree was loaded with fruit.  30 feet high, its branches reaching out 25 feet in circumference, the tree would offer its ripe mulberries to us and the birds and the squirrels, for sure by the Fourth of July.  This tree was brought to our land as a hishadagh հիշատաղ , a remembrance of the mulberry trees that grew in Marash, where the fruit of the white mulberry was so treasured that garlands of dried white mulberries would hang in the shops of the marketplace to the delight of Armenians, Turks, Kurds, Jews, Greeks . . . all neighbors in the Marash of the Ottoman Empire. In Wilbraham, Medzmama (who grew up in Marash) used to spread a sheet under the tree, shake the branches, coaxing the tree to drop its fruits in abundance;  the

Ripe White Mulberries

children would gather around and eat the fruits off of the sheet --without the sheet,  the mulberries would have been lost in the lush grass that grew beneath the tree.  The mulberry tree was the first stop my father would make after driving to Wilbraham from Newton: from the porch of the cabin, we could see him down in the field, patiently eating one white mulberry, and then another, and another, until his appetite, his joy, and his memories were filled.    But that all changed with the tornado's song. Or, as my father would say, "Those days are gone . . . forever."