I love strawberries, but if you buy the real kind, the ones from the country road-side stand that were picked earlier that morning and carried across the turn-row instead of the ones picked two days prior and trucked endless miles, you will almost always find that they are mingled with a little bit of sand. This makes them more authentic, not less appealing. The supermarket strawberries look better than their country counterparts, to be sure, but this is an illusion. Inside they are but bland and vapid, anticlimax cloaked in crimson. When you bite into an authentic country strawberry, though you must take care for the sand, the taste never disappoints. Real life is like the country strawberry. And life is about finding the strawberries amidst the sand.
Some time ago I came across a passage in "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl" that has stuck with me ever since. Just three weeks before the raid on The Annex, the diary tells of how those who were helping hide the Frank family managed to procure a large amount of strawberries:
“We ate hot cereal with strawberries…bread with strawberries, strawberries for dessert, strawberries with sugar, strawberries with sand. For two days there was nothing but strawberries, strawberries, strawberries, and then our supply was either exhausted or in jars, safely under lock and key”(328).
I can’t begin to imagine after subsisting on a diet of potatoes, beans, and rice, with only the occasional dessert or piece of candy, how wonderful strawberries must have been. Even in the darkest of moments, it is the simple pleasures that take the sting out of human suffering. But my cynical side still wonders what the point was in making so much jam, of preserving so many strawberries for another day. They would not remain long enough to enjoy them. It is this balancing act of life that is most difficult to all of us—what to enjoy today, and what to save till tomorrow. I can’t help but wonder what happened to those preserved strawberries.
And so there are these two things we must do in life to stay sane, I think. We must find the strawberries amidst the sand, and we must find a way of both enjoying those strawberries today and preserving those strawberries for tomorrow. Writing is one of the few ways to do that, and this blog will be an exercise in that discipline.
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Was this your piece (or part of) Anne's Strawberries that was published in Q & P? I remember reading it but I can't quite remember.
ReplyDeleteIn response to the cynicism of the Franks preserving the strawberries, I would say this...what if some lost lonely soul that survived the war and all its horrors, came into the Frank household and found the amazing, delicious preserved strawberries? What if tasting them was a little slice of heaven? What if it brought them the first comfort and joy they had experienced in a long while? I think that then they certainly were not wasted, only passed along to a future generation.
I'm being facetious, but I do think this is life. Nothing gets wasted. ;)
You've got me thinking about all those people, the grandmas and fussy aunts, who cover their sofas with plastic and only use the good dishes on Thanksgiving and Christmas. What are they preserving it for?
ReplyDeleteLife is short. Eat off the good dishes. Every day.
Shana: Part of it is adapted from that piece. I like the optimism of your analysis--that some kind soul enjoyed the Jam. That is awesome. In the piece I imagine the SS officers fattening themselves on the spoils--a much more pessimistic take, I suppose.
ReplyDeleteSusan: My Great Grandma was that very person. A couple of years after she died I revisited her old home and was amazed at the decay and disrepair. The things she never fully enjoyed because she didn't want to harm them ended up falling prey to simple entropy. Yes. Eat off the good dishes, and when someone breaks one of the, just sweep it up and smile. Love it.
Thanks for directing me to your blog, Mark. When I first read your blog title, I couldn't imagine what the stawberries and sand meant. But I agree--writing can be our way to stay sane by discovering "the stawberries amidst the sand" in the process. And I look forward to following your musings. Keep writing! :) kj
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