My sister and I had dresses
with strawberries
embroidered on the pockets,
red ribbon around the neck
and hemlines just above
knobby little knees.
Her smile had teeth lost
to a fairy,
my hair a bowl cut
with shaggy bangs
hanging over
my father’s eyes.
Each year
on a June Sunday
the Volkswagen’s distinctive motor roared
up Cape
past old Colonials
and salt boxes
with white geraniums
and weathered weathervanes,
the sound and scent
of the Atlantic
the score
to my childhood.
The requisite stop
at the donut shop,
its sign a wooden cruller
to fortify for the strawberry fields
of Sandwich,
its town motto
“after so many shipwrecks, a haven”,
where early settlers
touched rock
long before U-Pick farms
laid their patches
amidst scrubby pine.
Rows seemed to young legs
to stretch for miles,
fragrant sweet earth and crushed jammy fruit under toe.
Our mandate
ripe but not too
loaded into wooden baskets
the same
used every summer,
the very definition of
New England frugality.
By mid-morning
our berries weighed
and rinsed
under the farmer’s spigot,
we’d splay in the grass
giggling
riding a fructose high,
warm berry juice
staining hands, cheeks,
dresses.
#summerfood #remindsmeofchildhood #strawberries #capecod
(at At Home in Napa)