Life goes in cycles (6/23/03)

It’s hard for me to believe that it has been thirty years since I went strawberry picking with my mother-in-law.

She was recovering from a hysterectomy and I was tired of being pregnant. We were not a pretty sight as we waddled down the rows but we managed to pluck enough of the juicy red fruit to fill our baskets and our ample tummies. Maybe that is why my daughter is so fond of strawberries, or is it silly to think that?

Three days later I was begging my husband to turn the car around. I wasn’t really tired of being pregnant. That baby could stay inside as long as she wished if he would turn around and drive us back home. His white knuckles on the steering wheel betrayed the fact that he was as scared as I was but he kept on driving.

Three days after that we arrived back home with a beautiful baby girl. In my memories, she didn’t shut her eyes or her mouth for the first six weeks of her life. I know I am wrong about this as I have photographs of her asleep in her crib. All I remember is trying futilely to console an infant when I didn’t have a clue what the problem was. I frequently resorted to putting her in the car seat and driving around at midnight in my pajamas because that was the only way I could get her to quit screaming.

It seemed like no time at all before she was curled up inside the kitchen cabinets shoving a box of Sugar Crisp up the dogs nose before grabbing a handful of the cereal for herself. Tea parties with the toddler across the street were a daily occurrence. Then in almost the next instant she was in elementary school.

She lived in her bathing suit every summer except when she went to Bible school with the neighbor girls. A few years later she was still living in her bathing suit during the summer but by then she was a lifeguard and was teaching Bible school.

Now she is married and is trying to create a baby of her own. I guess life really does come full circle. But does it have to go so fast?

It is unbelievable to me that I could be old enough to have a child turning thirty. It was just yesterday that I was the one turning thirty. How can time have passed so quickly? What ever happened to the long, languid days of summer that seemed to stretch for eternity? Whatever happened to all the hopes and dreams we had?

Those hopes and dreams are still there. Some of them have been realized, some have been modified and some are still hovering in the background, waiting for their times in the sun. A few have been handed over to other people and have blossomed in their lives.

As for the long, languid days of summer, those are still around also. Underneath all the frenzied running around that marks modern living, the slow steady beat of life goes on. Birds still build nests and raise their young where we can watch, lightning bugs still flit inside Mason jars on warm summer evenings.

Children still know what the rest of us have forgotten. They live their lives in the here and now, not worrying about the dishes piled up in the sink or the obligations lurking in the background. They know that summer lasts forever, parents know everything (at least for a few years) and that strawberries are best eaten within seconds of having been picked.[[In-content Ad]]