Growing Strawberries Again

When I was a girl, my family had a strawberry patch. On early summer mornings, my mother sent me to the back yard to weed the patch and pick the berries. I’d sit there weeding and eating, flapping the bugs away and feeling the chilly dirt.

My mother was a terrific gardener. In addition to strawberries, we grew zucchini, lettuce, rhubarb, beans, and enormous tomatoes. One year we planted and harvested a row of corn. Another year we put in raspberry bushes.

But the strawberries were special.

They ripened in June, and that’s when we celebrated nearly every family event: my mother’s birthday, my parents’ anniversary, Father’s Day, my birthday, and my brother’s birthday. The ripening strawberries were part of the festivities.

For some reason, my birthday was the occasion when strawberries took center stage. As a little girl, I ordered a strawberry cake for my parties. In later years, my mother made strawberry pie for my birthday. It was a simple but miraculous treat: delicate crust, ripe strawberries laced with a small amount of sugar, and homemade whipped cream.

As my mother aged, she became ill with depression. The depression cloaked her, and then it cloaked our house. As the years went by, spring became unbearable. People prone to depression are often sickest in the spring—as the rest of the world awakens to new life, and as the flowers bloom and the strawberries ripen, sad people are frozen in winter.

Continued on page 2: Each year, I dreaded Mother's Day... »