The first strawberries of the season have appeared at our local farm stand, and I bought three quarts. They are everything good that I remembered about fresh strawberries from last year. Sweet, ripe, delicious!
As I was hulling and slicing them, I remembered another occasion when I was serving strawberries nearly thirty years ago.
As a child, I had always wanted to take piano lessons. Not a good idea, my mother said. A piano would fall through the floor. While that sounds extreme, it masked the real reason my mother didn't want to have a piano in the house: all those children (there were five of us) could have created an awful racket pounding on it. Also, she had memories of her one and only piano recital during which she forgot her piece. After several attempts at the performance, she walked off the stage and never took another lesson.
When we lived in Wyomissing we bought a piano, and the girls and I took lessons. When I left the marriage, I took only my clothes and the children's furniture and clothing. I was sad to leave the piano behind, but it was necessary.
After a long job search I found work teaching. The job provided low pay and few benefits, but it was a job. It was a toe in the door, a chance to show what I could do, and perhaps to get hired. Turned out I was hired the following year — on the salary scale and with full benefits.
Late that spring I answered an ad and bought a piano! I enlisted the help of my brother, Dick, and brother-in-law, Frank, who had a truck, to move it to our townhouse. Anticipating a celebration, I bought an angel food cake, a half-gallon of ice cream, and two quarts of the first strawberries of June. I hulled and sliced the berries, sugared them, then placed them in the fridge to chill until the moving was done.
The men moved the piano into place in the dining room, and I began dishing up desserts. The first bowl went to Dick's wife Kathy. I handed another bowl to my sister Dorothy just as Kathy said, "Donna, there's something wrong with these berries. They're salty!"
What?! I tasted them, something I hadn't done because I didn't want to eat a single berry of the celebratory treat. Definitely laden with salt. I checked the sugar canister; it had been filled with salt.
I found out later that my daughter Patty had played an April Fool's Day trick on me — and we used so little sugar that I hadn't discovered it. And she had forgotten about it.
Plan B: angel food cake and ice cream.
This morning, remembering the salty berries, I smiled — something I had not done that day so long ago.
