Every summer my sister, Jenny, my mother, and I would go picking strawberries at a small farm just beyond the Horicon Marsh. Mom always made us wear our “old clothes” which was hard to pick out of a pile because they didn’t look much different from our everyday clothes—cut off jeans that frayed at the knees and a hand-me-down t-shirts from one of our cousins. We didn’t get much new clothes growing up unless they were church dresses that Mom hand sewned. We got the leftovers that Aunt Pat brought over in garbage bags from her daughters, Billi and Amy. Jenny always got the good stuff, and rightly so, she was the oldest. I eventually got to wear Billi’s denim jean jacket that I had my eye on as soon as I pulled it out from the bottom of the bag. (It looked the newest.) I wore it after Jenny tore holes in the pockets and the sleeves thinned.
All of our old clothes turned red after strawberry picking. Like all kids our t-shirts were our napkins. It was the only time Mom didn’t really care how messy we got because we were working. When you worked, you could get as dirty as you liked. On our hands and knees, we twisted, pulled, and tore berries from the vines. Anyway we could break them free of the stems was fair game. My sister and I just wanted it done and over with. It was always too hot. Our thighs itch under the thick denim, and since you had to stay still, the horseflies ate you alive, dive bombing you from all directions.
The only good thing about picking strawberries is . . . I bet you think I am going to say eating them. (Well, that was part of it.) But it was watching my mother eat them. Mom, brought up in a very German household that pushed the “work until you die” work ethic and honesty, stole strawberries. Yes, she stole them. (One in her flat, the next in her mouth.) Of course she looked around to make sure no one was looking. (Then, one in her flat, the next in her mouth.)
I never yelled at her or scolded her like she did to us when we tried to steal candy out of the big bins at the grocery store. And she never said it was wrong or right, but she didn’t have to. It was like a secret between her and us: Our mother stole. Our mother lied. It didn’t matter that it was just strawberries.
The only thing she said as we left the field after hours of picking with six full flats, fly bites covering our necks, and pink fingertips was “They should have weighed me before I came in.”
