The Jacarandas began to bloom the week my mother’s voice changed in my dreams. Memories swept through my mind as if they had been waiting for this time. Every October, as children, we would wait for the single jacaranda in our neighborhood to paint the streets purple. And just like that, the most magical time of the year was upon us. Growing up in an African township meant most of us weren’t surrounded by luxury. My luxury was watching everything around me change; the kind of change that brings comfort money could never buy.

The mulberry tree was the first thing that taught me patience. It never rushed to fruit. It waited for rain, for sun, and for the hum of children beneath its shade. In a South African home, it is an unforgivable sin to come home dirty. Yet my memories are filled with bruised hands and purple tongues, the evidence of our sweet rebellion.

The problem was never the fruit, but the tree’s position. It stood behind the shack of an immigrant woman we only knew as Aunty. To reach it, we had to climb the wall behind her shack, landing on her roof. We were told endlessly to wait for the fallen fruit, to be patient, but temptation was stronger. I still remember holding a small plastic bag, full of mulberries, their taste otherworldly. That night, I was sick until morning.

My mother became relentless. She watched us like a hawk, her eyes always catching the faintest trace of purple on my hands or the edge of my dress. To her, those stains were small rebellions—proof that I was out there again, chasing sweetness where I shouldn’t. To me, it felt like punishment, like she had forgotten what it meant to be a child under the tree’s spell.

At ten each morning, the streets became our kingdom. Our laughter echoed off tin roofs, our sandals slapped against dusty ground, our dreams carried in the wind. The sun was high, and we were wild. By the time I returned home, I was marked in the color of joy, sticky fingers, and a guilty smile that gave me away before I spoke.

Each evening, her irritation grew. She would scrub my hands clean, shaking her head at the stains that refused to fade. And then, one afternoon, she laid down her final rule: white only. White became her safety, her way of keeping me untouched by the world’s color. But to me, it was a cage. It was the end of magic.

I remember sitting by the stoop that faced the gate, staring out at the other children, their laughter rising like the summer heat. My white dress glowed in the sunlight, and I felt like a ghost watching life move without me. It took me years to understand that her rules were not meant to cage me, but to protect me from a world that punished children who looked like me for being too free.

But what I thought was just my mother’s rule was, in truth, everyone’s story. All around the township, mothers watched from behind curtains, shaking their heads at purple-stained children. The warnings were the same, the laughter the same, the sweetness just as forbidden.

In our community, mulberries were the fruit you never asked for. You found them. You didn’t buy them; you simply indulged. They hung over fences and shacks, staining your hands and calling you to climb. That was freedom — the first freedom a child knows. Being forbidden that freedom became my first resentment.

When the mulberry tree fruited, the whole home felt it. Clothes turned purple, mothers scolded playfully, and someone always said, “We’ll make juice or jam this year.” October became our month of color and sweetness.

Mulberries are deeply rooted in the township because they thrive in harsh soil. They are survivors, like us. Even when the rain is late, the mulberry fruits. Its branches reach wide, like arms that never stop holding. Its leaves, thick and heart-shaped, hum with hidden insects. The bark was rough against our knees as we climbed. The air beneath it was cool, scented with fruit and dust.

The mulberry tree was our first teacher of patience. You could not rush its sweetness. It grew the way love does in our homes.

Love, I’ve learned, is a season too. It flowers and teaches you patience. My mother was the soil; the one who kept watch when I reached too high.

And I loved her like a mulberry in the sun.