Perfect strawberry love.

My friend, Aud, just posted today her soon to be a bestseller dictionary publication. It is inspiring me to want to write about one of my own little ditties, that I came up with years ago, and sticks with me to this very day.

June is strawberry season around here. Every year, in the middle to the end of the month, local strawberries are available by the bucketful. We try to go every year, to a local strawberry farm, and pick as many berries as we can carry, and then take them home, make jelly, and eat them until we turn red. It is amazing.

One year, during such a season, many years ago, I was sorting through the berries that we would use to make our jelly. And, I came across one of the most perfect strawberries that I had ever seen. No bruising, no green color, just perfectly red and perfectly ripe all the way around. Yet, it was not perfectly round; it was an odd shape, and it had a big stem, leaves and was covered with seeds.

Perfect strawberry; like love to me, in that moment. Ripe, moist, just right in so many ways, on the outside; yet, still some imperfections, still little, individual differences that make each of us unique.

If we partake, if we dive into that strawberry love, and take a bite, we get to experience that sweetness, that juiciness, that ultimate experience of perfect strawberry love. Looking at it from afar is a great experience; actually having it, eating it, is even sweeter.

When I first thought of this, it came to me that I do not mean that love is perfect, or that every love experience calls this analogy to mind. Love is far from perfect; it is the height of imperfection. But, for me, love, the love that I have now in my life, and have had for years, is the epitome of this analogy. I had sorted through so many other strawberries, and ate many that were still a bit green, had a bruise or two, or were way too big, overgrown.

It was not the love that I was searching for, or waiting for it to find me.

When I came across the most perfect strawberry I had ever seen, it was not perfect, but it was fully ripe, ready, firm, yet soft....... it was ready to be consumed.

And, the sweetness was beyond anything that I could have imagined.

Now, in hindsight, I can't say that all of those other strawberries were wasted; that I didn't have some enjoyment in them.

The difference, is that I enjoyed them; I found joy in this one.

Perfect strawberry love.