Christy Writes: I Thought About Strawberries
It has been, to understate it a bit, a long and difficult winter. Of course, as I’m past the age of rocketing down snowy hills on my big round metal sled and I cannot ice skate to save my life, all winters seem long now. But this year’s cold months have been fraught with lingering illness, wrenching loss, small problems, big setbacks, and one aggravation after another. I want to throw my hands up and shout “What else you got?” but I’m afraid of what the answer might be. I’m Job in a hippie skirt.
On the autumn equinox last year, I began my daily meditation by setting the intention to spend the winter ridding myself of all my old emotional baggage, of bad habits and negative beliefs, of anything that’s holding back my growth. Mind you, I was thinking along the lines of forgiving old hurts and letting go of negative self-talk, but the amount of stuff the universe pulled out and added to my pile was more than I’d bargained for. Grow through this.
I tried the “others have it worse than I do” routine, and while that is certainly and thankfully true, it’s cold comfort when the pile of problems that seems insurmountable is mine. I usually remind myself to be in the moment, every moment, to stay with the fallow times and learn what they’re trying to teach me, but this time I was the sulky student in the back row. I didn’t want to learn whatever this winter was trying to teach me, I just wanted to get away from it. I tried exercise. I tried getting a little more sleep. I tried guided meditations about walking through peaceful meadows complete with birdsong and water sounds. I tried listening to upbeat music. I even tried to dance while vacuuming, which did not end well. I did everything I knew how to do to keep myself from slipping into depression, or at best, going back to bed until May.
I suppose those things worked, to some degree, since as I write this I’m not in fact in bed but sitting at a table in the public library, fully dressed and not embarrassing myself in any but my usual ways. But one thing, one small and unintentional thing, is what truly turned this winter around for me.
I thought about strawberries.
The Guy and I are moving to a new home at the end of the month (our old one was one of the winter problems), and it has a beautiful backyard. And as I was thinking idly this week about our new backyard, I suddenly realized that more than anything, I want to plant strawberries.
That was all it took. The thought of a little strawberry patch – with tiny white flowers first, then those beautiful fat little sweethearts warm in the sun – gave me a glimmer of what’s to come, a vision of summer, of sunshine and new life and the belief that everything is going to be fine.
I already knew that everything is going to be fine, of course. Everything always works out in the end. As John Updike put it, “We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one.” And while my winter may not have been the best I ever had, none of the moments were my last one, so there’s that. But it was the idea of planting strawberries that suddenly made all my winter woes seem unimportant and remote.
I guess that’s what it’s all about, really. Knowing that even under the deepest freeze, there’s life. It’s about belief in the warmth to come. It’s about hope. It’s about strawberries.
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