Wild Strawberries

We all have a dish that takes us back in time. Memories explode in our minds like flavors pop in our mouths. My dish, if you can call it that because it’s a simple strawberry crumble recipe, takes me to places in my youth that I remember with laughter, with pain, with love. This strawberry crumble is savory like salt on skin. Its aroma takes me back in time like late afternoon sunshine filtered through a car window.

If sepia were a mouth-watering taste, it would represent exactly what strawberry crumble is to me. And if memories were the ingredients, they would make up the elements of this recipe.

Summer of ‘86

Wild strawberries are always better. Better than what, I always wanted to ask. But with my mom, there was no questioning. We could have simply gone to the supermarket for buckets of farm-made strawberries, but nope. We had five cups that needed to be heaping full by day’s end, and we had to do it by picking them ourselves from the wild. It’s what we always did during the summer.

And that’s when I first ever saw him. Sporting jeans with holes. Disheveled hair. A white tee shirt that was browner than anything else. He had just moved in next door, and by next door, I mean about a half-mile from our home, at least he must be one of the five kids who moved in. Heard my mom talking about the new neighbors one day. And she wasn’t so sure about them.

Neither was I, by the looks of him.

But there he was walking along my dirt road. And picking my wild strawberries.

I stared at him from a distance, first. There was something off. He looked to be my age; 13 years old.

“Hey!?” I finally said to him.

“Hey.” He said back but never looked up to see who was talking to him.

I started to pluck the small strawberries from the vines and drop them one by one into the bucket. My sister hadn’t yet come outside. I looked back at our house, waiting for the screen door to swing open. Not wanting the screen door to open.

“These are good.”

“Yep,” I said, surprised.

“We just moved in.”

“Uh-huh.”

Then silence. There was a sparkle in his eyes. I was curious. But I just stood there, waiting.

“You picking these?” He held out a strawberry.

“Yeah, we make crumble with them.” And that was my cue to get started. I plucked and dropped strawberries into the cups. And as the ones on the edge of the road disappeared, I had to dig into the weeds to find more. He followed.

“What’s your name?”

“Robbie,” he said.

“Hi, Robbie.”

And like I said, that’s how I met him. The next day he was outside, hanging out on the dirt road. His bike was tossed to the ground. I strolled up, quiet.

Again, without looking up, he asked, “How was the strawberry crumble?”

The question was remarkable. He remembered. I licked my lips and tasted the sugar-laced strawberries. (Yeah, you know what I mean.) He was cleaner today. His shirt was without a crease like cornstarch had been used. His vanilla eyes glowed in the sun.

So we spent that day together. We mixed strawberry picking with bird watching. I wanted to pour my soul into his hands, even though I didn’t know what that meant.

He uprooted a yellow flower and handed it to me. Then, I did the only thing I could think of, I asked him if he wanted to try our strawberry crumble.

Summer of ‘88

The summer of 1988 was hot – record-breaking hot even if that record has since been broken. In any case, it was gonna be a fun, albeit hot, summer in the sun, and that’s because it was the day before Jackie’s big pool party. And at Jackie’s pool party, Robbie was going to be there.

Little did I know that this day would ruin it all. It started off well. We were going to the beach, and I was gonna get a tan. That tan was gonna make me look more mature. (Yeah, you know where this is going.)

As soon as we stepped outside and got into the car, it was like walking into an oven. Pop, pop, poppity pop. Like tar, bubbles exploding under the weight of our bikes. It was the kind of hot that started off slow and builds until so thick it balled up between our shoulder blades and raced down as beads of sweat. It felt like we were baking at 350 degrees by the time we got to the beach.

But there was a breeze in the air that called out to us. It was an invitation, and we accepted it.

As those beads of sweat rolled down my face, my mom sprayed us with sunscreen. The SPF 45 layered up on our skin with a foamy whiteness. She treated us like she treated a pan with vegetable oil spray when preparing to bake strawberry crumble. Always a bit more than required.

I wiped off the extra sunscreen with my towel and whipped around to face the waves. My sister and I looked at each other once and then raced to the coolness of the foaming ocean water.

And from that point, the day rolled on without us noticing. We splashed around. We jumped waves. We laughed. We jumped more waves and swam to see who would dear go out the farthest. And then, as we swam back, we grew tired. Our eyes burned. And we sluggishly walked back to our towels.

There, the umbrella no longer shaded my mom’s face. But she was asleep. My sister and I threw out our towels, patted them into the sand, and laid down on our backs. It took only a few seconds to fall asleep but a few hours to wake up. We only woke up when we heard our mom shriek.

“Girls!”

We tried to move, but our skin held tight, burning tight. To pack up and walk to the car hurt. I had flip-flops on, but it was like walking on coals all the way back. The sun’s heat cursed us.

That night, mom layered us up with cream. It was cool when applied, but the relief was fleeting. In the morning, my skin felt baked, and each move was like a knife slicing my skin. Blisters had developed. On my shoulders and my back. I was gonna have to miss the pool party. I was gonna have to skip seeing Robbie.

The tears came quick. And though my mom knew why cried even though she didn’t exactly know why I cried; she knew. On the porch, I sat with an icepack on my back. It was then, early in the evening, that I smelled the sweetness, the tartness. The screen door opened, and in one of our nice China bowls, my mom handed me the crumble that melted like butter in my mouth. I puckered my lips with the first tangy bite only to have it go down like berry honey.

And as we ate, the lightning bugs began to twinkle.

Summer of ‘90

In a separate medium-size bowl, I had already combined the flour, the old-fashioned oats, the brown sugar, the granulated sugar, the salt, and the cinnamon. I mixed and mixed, making sure I was following my mom’s recipe to the tee. Once thoroughly mixed, I poured the melted butter and stirred until it was well-coated and crumbly.

Robbie was coming over. It was a month before our senior year would begin. And this would, I knew it, be the year.

I sprinkled the crumble over the strawberry filling.

The late afternoon heat had made its way into the kitchen and sweat rolled down my brow. I licked a finger, saving the beads of sugar on my tongue until it melted – the same way the strawberry filling absorbed the sugar until they were one.

He – and by that, I mean Robbie – would be at my house in an hour. My sister was staying with her friend, and my parents had gone away for the weekend.

I rinsed my hands off.

A fly buzzed around the crumble, and I swatted at it.

I looked at the crumble, smiling. I remembered. This was the first thing we ate together, the first time we met, and the first time I ever felt this way about someone – ever.

I slid it into the preheated oven. 350 degrees. Hot. Piping hot. The type of hot that would caramelize those strawberries and thicken the juices and bring sweetness to my life.

I looked at the clock. I had to shower quickly. I had to iron my dress still. I needed to hurry.

Tick. The timer went. Tick. Tick. Rhythmic-like. It made me anxious. Time had come and gone but was still there, always there. There’s always time even when there’s not.

I ran upstairs and got ready as quickly as I could. I did my hair. I smelled the strawberries.

Then the doorbell. He was here. And that’s when I realized nearly an hour had gone by. I never heard the timer ding. I ran into the kitchen.

The doorbell rang again.

I grabbed the mitts and took the crumble out.

A layer of black lined the pan. I swallowed hard.

The doorbell rang again.

I placed the strawberry crumble into the microwave to hide it if nothing else. But I really wanted to hide the tears swelling in my eyes.

I bit my lip and went to the door.

There, perfection. My Robbie standing with yellow wildflowers in his hands. He remembered! If I hadn’t known better, I’d say he picked them himself. I took the flowers to avoid the tears in my eyes. His fingers lingered on mine momentarily.

That’s when he smiled. And lightning shook my body.

“Strawberry crumble?” He asked even though he knew it to be true.

I could barely nod. As we stood there. I was making it awkward. So, without waiting for me to invite him in, he just came in. It wasn’t like he had never been there before. We had spent the last several years running back and forth from house to house. When he turned 16 and got a car, he drove me to school with him. He took me with him to meet our friends for football games, soccer games, the class play, and on and on.

I couldn’t recall how that evening materialized. We were at Jackie’s house the week before. A few of us got together to go swimming. I didn’t have a car, so he drove. It was when he dropped me home, that it got quiet. We were quiet. And waited. The heat filled his car that night. But we never touched.

The next day he texted, “What are you doing next Friday?”

That’s when I said, "Not much." because everyone would be gone, my sister and my parents. I would have the house to myself for the evening.

He texted back, “Great. We can watch a movie together.”

Once he smelled that strawberry crumble, though, he wasn’t shy anymore. He took my hand in his and led me to my own kitchen.

“Where is it?”

I remained a tinge sullen.

“What’s wrong?”

“I ruined it.”

“You did not.” Then he proceeded to open the oven, the fridge, the cabinets, and finally the microwave. He pulled it out and sniffed.

“Wild strawberries?”

“Burnt ones.”

He just looked at me like, burnt? What did that even mean? (And yes, you definitely know where I’m going with this.)

He grabbed a fork and led me to the porch. We sat on the swing, and he immediately dug the fork into the center, breaking the crumble apart, swirling the fork around, and scooping up a full bite, half strawberry filling and half crumble.

And we laughed. It was perfect. The moment was perfect, and the strawberry crumble was perfect, like it had been and continues to be each and every hot summer evening thereafter.