Berry patch of life has sharper thorns for parents.

Byline: Dorcas Smucker For The Register-Guard

I have lofty goals for my children. I expect them to grow up equipped with both wisdom and common sense, able to sense and avoid danger, ready to see a need and meet it, and eager to make a difference in the world. However, I have two adolescent boys who are not as enthusiastic about my goals and standards as I am. In fact, their ideas and mine seem to clash on a regular basis. This results not in me lowering my standards, but rather in plunging into despair because IOm sure I have failed as a mom.

A typical example of this is the recent event we now refer to as the Blackberry Episode. Wild blackberries are both a pest and a blessing in this part of the Willamette Valley. Uncontrolled, they take over any vacant area, smothering old machinery and small buildings and anything else in their way.

But late every summer, along fence rows and behind old barns, they produce a crop of delicious berries, nestled among millions of vicious thorns, free to anyone brave enough to pick them.

I have found this a good enterprise for Ben, age 14, and Steven, 12, who like to attempt courageous feats and go exploring in jeans and rubber boots. As August turned into September, I sent them out every few days. They always returned with an ice cream bucket or two of berries, which I turned into pies, cobblers and jars of pie filling for this winter. Their best picking spot was about half a mile away, across the neighborOs fescue field, along the railroad tracks.

One day I realized the rain would be coming soon and the blackberry season was about to end, so after supper I sent the boys on one last expedition, letting them out of doing dishes as a bonus.

An hour or so later they came back, but with only part of a bucket of berries. Suspiciously, I demanded an explanation and Ben slowly complied. "Uh, well, you see, it's like this. We picked a full bucket of berries, plus about a third, and then we climbed the fence back into the field and headed home and I was like, "Hey! Big wide-open field - let's see if we can walk 200 steps with our eyes closed!"

I thought, "No no no. Please, no."

Steven traversed his 200 steps safely, I was told, and opened his eyes to see that Ben had veered off north toward Substation Drive and a fence. He yelled, but Ben ignored him, figuring Steven had stepped in a hole or something. Shortly after, at step 181, Ben crashed into the fence and spilled his entire bucket of berries irretrievably into the dirt and straw. "Yeah."

I am not often at a loss for words, but when I heard this woeful tale I opened my mouth to say something, then shut it, shook my head, then opened my mouth again, then shut it again.

The boys quickly leaped into the gap and said all the proper things such as, "We know it was really stupid; we're sorry; we'll never try that again; we'll pick more berries tomorrow."

My husband, Paul, then joined the conversation."See, what you have to do is look around and make sure there's no fence within 200 steps in any direction before you try that."

My silent tongue let loose at this point in a shrill, "What? That's not the point! The point is that you think about the cargo in your hands before you do something that stupid! And you don't walk with your eyes shut with a bucket of blackberries in your hands, fence or no fence!"

Paul and the boys looked at me sympathetically, no doubt thinking, "Poor Mom, off on one of her rants again."

As always, I read far too much into the incident. I was failing as a mom; there was no doubt about that. All these years and I hadnOt taught Ben and Steven a shred of common sense. If they lived to grow up they would no doubt someday try to walk 200 steps across a fescue field - or a busy highway - with their eyes closed, only with their first child in their arms rather than a bucket of berries. Paul, in contrast, was calm and straightforward as always. "Well," he told me, "that's one of the disadvantages of having creative kids." He did not say out loud, but implied, "And I recall you were the one that always wanted creative kids."

My friend Arlene, when I called her, was far more consoling. "Your boys are nice," she told me gently. "And they're smart, and they really are going to grow up into good people."

Parenting, I have decided, is much like a jaunt to the berry patch, best undertaken with courage and resolve and tall boots. You hope for a bucket of ripe berries in the end, but there are no guarantees. The thorns may be frustrating and sometimes even overwhelming, but the real challenge for me at this stage is to focus on the berries instead of the scratches I get in the process.

Despite the stupidity of the Blackberry Episode, I have to admit that overall, Arlene is right, and my boys are turning into nice people. For example, both Ben and Steven, for all their irritation at 8-year-old Jenny, will make her a peanut butter sandwich before they make their own. They take her swimming in the creek and exploring in ditches and woods. The other day, Steven actually emptied the kitchen garbage without being told. Ben gets himself up early to finish his homework. Both boys are kind to cats - one of the best indicators, in my experience, of a man's character. And the day after the Blackberry Episode, they headed across the fescue field without being told and returned with a full bucket of berries.

Sometimes, I've found, you push aside a large leaf among a thousand irritating thorns and find an unusually generous cluster of berries. Such was a little conversation I overheard recently, proof that despite my exasperation with them, the boys are absorbing the most important message of all - how truly loved they really are. Paul was on the couch one morning, reading that week's Sunday school lesson, a study from the book of Genesis about Isaac and Rebekah and how they each favored one of their twin sons, Jacob and Esau.

"Hey, Ben," I heard Paul saying, "Who's your mom's favorite child?" And Ben promptly replied with the perfect but completely unscripted answer: "It's a six-way tie for first place." As always, I read far too much into this, thinking tearfully, "OK, I can officially die happy now - I have succeeded as a mom after all." Parenting, like picking blackberries, is a journey into perilous territory. Sticky refrigerator doors and spilled buckets and senseless arguments poke and irritate. But eventually, biting into the sweet steaming goodness of a slice of blackberry pie, the scratches and scars become worthwhile and almost forgotten.

Dorcas Smucker is a homemaker and mother of six. She can be reached at letterfrom [e-mail].