Strawberry Heart

When I slept with a nightlight and a stuffed animal named Mow, I wanted to be a strawberry.

This is Real, not True.

Maybe it was because sometimes you come across a strawberry that looks like the hearts you find on cards, or the shape of boxes filled with chocolates my mom buys for me every Valentine’s Day and they all fill my heart so much, I have to look away as I eat all the chocolates, except for the cherry jubilee one.

Maybe because as you bite into it, there are millions of colors in the fruit, too many for such a small thing. Colors between colors between colors. There’s so much I have stored inside of me & I’m only just getting to see them all now.

They choose when they reveal themselves. Sometimes they only show themselves to me for a flash of a second before they go back to their homes; we are playing peek-a-boo, or they’re late for lunch with a friend and have to go without saying goodbye so they skip traffic.

I don’t control them; I know it, and so do they. They like to remind me of that, especially during therapy, when Naomi and her orchids and her sometimes-cane say, “I think you could just sit here and sob,” and I could, but I also can’t, and the blue in me says, “Oh yes we could, she sees that, but not now.” And the blue is happy Naomi sees her, but feeling shy, so I ask the blue Why Not? And then, as if it’s obvious, as if it’s law, the blue snips at me, “Because you might not stop. And besides, we’ve held this a long time and who are we without this big fat splash of sorrow?”

And then, poof! My blue slams the door to her room and stomps her feet a bit.

I want to cry for her and for me and for my child-self and even for Naomi and her orchids and her sometimes-cane, but my tears are behind a door I can only find when she wants it found, and she doesn’t right now, so I smile, because what else can you do? And then the hour session that isn’t really an hour is done, so I go home and sit on the porch-patio with a view of the building housing squatters, and I try to cradle my selves, my colors between colors.

“Blue? Can you hear me?” I say, and she hears me, but pretends not to.

I carry on.

“If you’re not ready to come out, that’s okay. You stay right there in your room, but know that when you do peek your head out, I’ll be here, okay? I don’t want to spook you, I just want to take your hand. I can feel you, bits of you, your outline, and I have so much love for you and everything you’re holding, but I can hold some of it too, if you’d like any help. It must be heavy.”

Some days this works and she pokes her head out and gives me her hand, but not all the time.

I have so much tenderness for her, and she can feel it, but sometimes it’s too much and she needs to be alone for a bit, like how I sometimes feel guilty for how much my mom loves me.

I try not to bother her then. I watch talk show clips and try very hard not to give her too much more to carry.

It is in these moments, moments of tenderness, where I can feel myself falling in love with me.

I can feel myself picking up my little girl self with her big eyes and prune hands from being naked in the swimming pool too long, the girl who grew up too fast for people who didn’t notice or say thank you because they were scared and not looking right at her and besides, they didn’t know quite how she needed to be loved, but they did the best they could.

I look right at her, pick her up, and rock her back and forth in my arms. I scratch her back and brush her hair and kiss her big cheeks and say, “Thank you,” over and over until the words lose meaning and become a chain, covering her like a blanket.

When that’s done and she’s settled into a deep sleep, I look up and see myself in not-so-many years, telling stories and not worrying about money and being loved steadily, and we lock eyes, the two of us, as if on opposite ends of a party.

She’s dressed in silk and cashmere, and she doesn’t need glasses anymore. She still doesn’t brush her hair as much as she should, though.

“Thank you,” she mouths to me. She says it once, and it’s enough for me. The words become a blanket too, this time for me. I nod at her, and she nods back, and there we all are, three colors in one container. Three colors that make a strawberry-heart, so sweet and ripe and full of juice it could make you cry when you eat it and think, “Maybe I’ll never have another strawberry again, because there cannot possibly be one quite as good as that,” but you have more strawberries anyway, and the memory of me and mine only sweetens the others, because that’s what real beauty does: it makes everything more beautiful too.

I want to eat the world and I want the world to eat me right back.

We’ll sit next to each other on a bench overlooking the sea, and we’ll be damp, because we’ve both gone for a swim in the water, but miraculously we don’t have sand in any of our nooks and crannies, we’re just sitting on a bench, drinking mugs of tea that warm our hands and hearts and throats, and we’ll slather each other on pieces of toast, like jam. We’ll each do that sigh-moan-thing people do when they eat something singularly delicious, and we’ll smile at each other sheepishly, because it feels almost sexual how much we love the way we each taste, but we both get it, so it’s okay. What a meal it will be. Indulgent the way only the simplest things can be.

Like strawberries and cream.