Blueberry Pancakes

By Kaysie Liang

Ilove blueberries. Most people are going to look at this and think that I am just saying I like them because of their color or since they have the word blue in the name, but I genuinely do love blueberries.

When I think about blueberries, I remember a trip I took with my friends in freshman year of high school. One of their families had a summer home in the Hamptons that we had gone to a few times before in middle school, but our trip in high school was the most memorable to me.

It was June, during New York State’s Regents week, and since we all took our exams earlier in the week, we essentially had a two-week break before summer vacation officially started. We all met up at my friend’s house in Park Slope so that her mom could drive the six of us. Upon arriving slightly after noon, we immediately dropped our things to jump into the pool. We spent the entire day in the backyard. I remember swimming for hours, having countless water fights and pool noodle battles. I remember eating dinner outside as the sun set. I remember how we failed to make a fire in the pit for s’mores even though the others were so confident in their abilities since they had done it before. I remember one of my friends heating up chocolate in a bowl to dip fruits in, and I remember another friend licking the chocolate bowl of whatever was left. I remember it being pitch black outside when my friends figured out the disco light setting of the hot tub. I remember all of us exploring the basement storage room and laughing at the miscellaneous items pulled out from random piles. I remember me and the other girls getting stuck in the storage room where we tried to scare the guys by knocking on the wall of their room’s closet. I remember going to bed at 4 a.m., only to wake up at 6 a.m. and not being able to go back to sleep because my internal alarm at the time was extremely strong. I watched the sun rise on my own and waited as the others began to stir awake around 8 a.m.

And I remember the blueberry pancakes my friend’s mom made for breakfast that cool summer morning as we sat outside on the deck.

The craziest thing was how I felt no exhaustion. The joy of being gathered with my friends, eating blueberry pancakes while talking about things I can’t remember and just enjoying the moment, has become one of my favorite memories. What’s even funnier is that until that day I had never had blueberry pancakes; they were simply not my first choice for pancakes. Yet from that moment on, I associated blueberry pancakes with this silly overnight trip at the end of my freshman year of high school and the memories I made with these people.

From a philosophical point of view, blueberries are like people. On the outside they are a pristine blue color but not some sort of unnatural solid shade — though the color blue appearing in nature is rare as it is. They taste better when you eat a couple at a time. They are beautiful and unique, and they are completely different in appearance internally: green and soft with the potential of being sweet or sour. Yet when they are smashed or preserved — applied pressure in the form of force or heat — the blue and green subside to present a dark shade of purple. So people are like blueberries in the way that they are complex and capable of such drastic changes. That is my complicated answer. My simple answer, however, is that I love blueberries. Especially blueberry pancakes.