Making Ink

A new kind of journey

We leave the boys at the withering basketball court, Pearl and I, and wander off toward the thick overgrowth. Struggling, as I am, with these illnesses likely tick-born, I am drawn to the heaps entangled in invasive vines. We follow the mowed edge. Yellow-orange Golden Rod. Tiny crimson Crab Apples. Magenta, purple and the nearly fluorescent stems of Pokeberries. The rest of the colour wheel is in the Porcelain Berries: Yellow, Green, Blue, and Indigo. Søren joins me. We fill our basket one berry at a time.

At home, we remove the stems and sort the berries by type and colour into old bottles. Our favourites are the yellow, green, and blue, Porcelain Berries. They remind me of my mom’s eyes, another landscape: sky, forest, sand — now ash — returned to Western Pennsylvania where she was born. I’ve wondered why I didn’t save some of her ashes.

A sudden strange twisting in my chest.
I could have made ink from them.
Ashes to ink.

We pour the berries into an old photography tray and the mashing begins. Anyone’s project is everyone’s project with homeschoolers. Everyone is curious. Everything counts. This is how it happens. I don’t mention my mom’s ashes and the ink I’ll never make from them.

“I call first mash!”
“I call second!”
“I called second!”

Theories and observations arise.
“It will definitely be clear!”
“It’s pink in places!”
“Maybe some Poke got in.”
“I hope it will be a tealish, blueish, greenish colour…”

After the mashing, we added vinegar, and we boiled.
After the boiling, we strained.
After the straining, we added gum Arabic
and boiled again.
And strained again.
After the mashing and boiling and straining,
we bottled and labeled.

The ink was a mystery.
The pot was edged with dried purple.
In the bottle was a rosie, barely-there ink.

I painted pink, viscous, swatches in my journal
and discovered the next day, they had turned green.