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| Image / Nashrodin Aratuc |
Strawberries
Summers I’d catch the bus at five, rub my eyes, roll on out to Laulainen Road, where my friend Janet’s Finnish relatives cultivated acres of strawberries, rows neat as pins, my grandmother would say, though the hedges of dark leaves, no resemblance to her blue and white quilts, more like the rows of peaches she put up in quart jars. The green beans she preferred to freeze, now that she had herself more than an icebox. Paid by the flat, not the fat nickel a box my mother proffered, we learned to feel for the ripe ones without even looking, waddling like ducks in a low squat. They almost fell off when ready.
The taste of a warm berry, fresh plucked, dust on your shoes, was like that cherry on top of a banana split, oozing sweetness at the drug store with swivel seats in town, nothing at all like the hard berries nowadays, some still splashed white, or concentrating seeds at the tip, deprived of the chance to mature. With more than they could harvest on the hill, Janet’s family didn’t mind our occasional red gulps. Everybody did it.
When it was too late to pick, we’d trundle off to the sauna, smelling like strawberries and dry dirt, suntan lotion mixed with sweat. Steamed out, we’d change into clean pedal pushers and tee-shirts, head home, juggling boxes of berries in our dreams, perennial rows winding like long braids, our strawberry bond stretching far as we could fathom. Even today, fingers stained with memory, the curve of the hill we worked still pulls a summer sky all the way down to earth.
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| Carol Barrett |
| Carol Barrett has published three volumes of poetry, most recently READING WIND, and one of creative nonfiction, PANSIES. An NEA Fellow in Poetry, Carol supervises creative dissertations for both Antioch and Saybrook Universities. |
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