Article and Photograph by Make The Days Count Contributor Judy Mosley

It had been a rough day.

My intention for the entire day was to finish the laundry.  It had been piling up like mountains in the basement and if I didn’t do something fast, we wouldn’t have been able to leave the house in a decent manner.  So at breakfast I prepared my children, letting them know that I had to finish the laundry and that I couldn’t play until it was done. “But, I can get it done much faster if you guys will help me,” I informed them, hoping that would be an incentive.  And, just like the storybook, my son replied, “Not I!”  So, the mother hen was left to fend for herself.

Between loads I had been able to spend some time with the kids, but got my big break around 3pm. We were hungry and I knew exactly what we were going to eat: Strawberries.

A couple of days before, I had bought four 16oz. packs of strawberries from our little grocery store.  Being 12 weeks along in my pregnancy, the only thing I knew that I wanted was strawberries.  And when we entered the fruit isle, there they were.  The red little bodies just gleamed with joy.  Without even looking at prices, I picked them up, smelled their rich aroma, had the kids smell them, and placed them in the cart.  Happiness was waiting.

I pulled all four packages from the fridge.  The label touted them as “The Finest Berries in the World”: A product of Mexico.  Instantly, I had visions of wide-open fields that stretched the sky, full of strawberries being warmed by the Mexican sun.  In the middle of winter I could almost feel the heat on my body.  Then, memories came to the surface.  Walking in the summer to my Grandma and Grandpa’s house where we would pick fresh strawberries from their garden.  I had always complained about picking them, but never complained about eating them once we got home.

Sunshine was spilling onto my counter.  I began to wash the berries and became fascinated by how the light and the water made the fruit more vibrant and lovely.  My son, walked up to me and asked if they were done yet, as he had been doing every five minutes since I had taken them from the fridge.  I told him again, “Not yet,” and continued to clean them, chopping off their leafy tops and any bad spots I put them all together in one large white bowl and the effect was beautiful!

I got out my camera and had to swipe my son’s eager hands away several times before I could get a clear shot.  I wanted to catch the beauty of this moment.  I wanted to remember how something this simple could make me feel so joyful in the middle of winter.  Placing them in various colored bowls only brought out their redness further.  It was so much fun, like painting, only with reality.

Finally, we all sat down.  Each with our individual bowls of strawberries.  We thanked God for them and dug in.

The table became quiet.  Up to this point, the kids had become pretty loud, antsy, irritable, but with their own bowl of strawberries, everyone was silent.  I took my own bite and felt the satisfaction of the slight skin break between my teeth.  I even tried to find the seeds so that I could bite them individually, just to feel the sensation of it.  I felt like a queen who had been sent an exotic fruit from a faraway country as a gift of friendship.  It was that good.

As we finished, I saved a few for my husband and reflected on the moments that had just passed.  I compared the price of my strawberries to a big bag of chips and realized that the strawberries were probably more expensive.  But I’ve never felt that happy with potato chips.  They’ve never made me feel that engaged or satisfied after I had finished eating them.

It seems that it’s always the simple things the wakes us up the most.

Wonderful food, a phone call from a friend, sunshine on our backs, a hug, hope, truth spoken in the right moment.  It’s these things that bring out life instead of take away life.  

And I wonder if that is part of the point of this hardship that we are going through in America.

It’s the opportunity to wake up, to be aware of what we do have, and to treasure what’s real and true and right in our lives.  It’s the chance to be free, without feeling like we are so incomplete if we can’t have this or that.  It’s the chance to be who we really are and to treasure what is real and valuable in our world.  It’s the opportunity to be thankful for all that life gives us every day.

If anything, those strawberries were a wonderful gift and one that I was glad to open.  The only thing left to do was to share them.  Enjoy!

“Seek always to do some good, somewhere. Every man has to seek in his own way to realize his true worth.  You must give some time to your fellow man.  Even if it’s a little thing; do something for those who have need of a man’s help, something for which you get no pay but privilege of doing it.  For remember, you don’t live in a world all your own.  Your brothers live here, too.”
-Albert Schweitzer

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