Strawberries

Here is an essay I wrote about Strawberries a few years ago. Circa the year I have an almost 3 year old and an almost 5 year old. I am in a new city. My best friend is Holly. She has two kids almost the same age. She called me one day and asked if we would like to go strawberry picking with her and her kids. Yes, I would love that. I need activities for my children every day. This is an activity. Holly is one of the nicest and most loving persons I have ever met. She knows Iowa City like the back of her hand. We decide on a time and a day and on the appointed day she comes in her mini van to my house. Myself and my two kids are ready. My two kids and her two kids are strapped to the backseat in her minivan and I sit in the front seat. We drive through the city and enter the countryside. I love driving through the countryside. On both sides there are fields, sometimes a cow grazing lazily, a barn with the kind of roof I have only seen in Iowa. Finally we reach an old dilapidated building. We get out of the car. On the other side of the road there was a field. We went to the field, the children clutching our hands. Then Holly showed us how to pick strawberries. We bent down and plucked strawberries from their stems. I think it was Holly who had brought plastic bins to collect our strawberries. It was a bright summer day. The children enjoyed romping in the field and picking strawberries. Once they picked a strawberry they would come and show it to us. Good job, we would tell them to encourage them. In a while our plastic bins are full of strawberries our fingers have some dirt and some strawberry juice on them and Holly says it is time to stop. The sun was getting hotter and children may get tired any moment. We cross the road and go back to the building. We want to pay for the strawberries we picked. But there is no one to take a payment. We walk up to the door and knock. No one opens the door. We walk to the back of the building. There is a shed and a goat in it, I think. I am scared of goats so I don't go near. Then we go to the front of the building. Near the road we see a stand made of a rugged wooden plank. On the stand there is a jar and on the jar there is a handwritten note. You can put your money for the strawberry in this jar. The note says. It is a dollar for a bin. We put the money for the strawberries we picked in the jar. I am in the most wonderful place on earth I thought as we drove back. Free strawberries. There is no one to check to see if we pay or not. The owners of the strawberry fields have so much strawberries they just want others to come and pick. They trust us so much that they don't check if we pay or not. They just leave a jar and a note. This is a country of abundance and trust, I thought. I loved that day of picking strawberries. Picking strawberries in a field in front of a dilapidated building where no one seemed to be living made me feel like I was part of a storybook set in a place which was not Kerala or India. It was my first summer in Iowa.

Rereading this essay that I wrote a few years ago reminded me of the Beatles song Strawberry Fields Forever.