Strawberries and essential workers
JUST READING AND WRITING about strawberries makes my mouth water for the taste of them. It also reminds me of the time a group of us young Sisters went strawberry picking at a local farm. We asked one of the retired Sisters to come along with us, and she was delighted to join us. She had been the chief cook when we were Novices and we knew she loved strawberries. She brought a lime-green straw hat with a wide brim to keep the sun off her face and a five gallon bucket to sit on as she hand-picked the luscious fruit. We joked with the owner of the farm when it was checkout time that we should have weighed her before she started to pick the berries as we enjoyed watching her eating a significant amount of berries in the process. We concluded our adventure with a trip for some ice cream, and guess what kind of ice cream cone she ordered—a large cone with two scoops of strawberry ice cream!
Over my lifetime, I’ve been aware of the essential workers who work so hard to help put food on our tables. Living in Ohio, I became more aware of the plight of the migrant worker as I drove passed people picking tomatoes in the fields. I also became aware of the inhuman living conditions they returned to each night after a long day in the hot sun doing the back-breaking work on the farm. I remember the streets in Bowling Green, Ohio being red with tomatoes that had fallen off the trucks that passed through the town on their way to the cannery. I couldn’t open my classroom windows because the smell from the rotting tomatoes was even worse than the oppressive heat. It became a teachable moment for us as we realized that this was part of how we get the food we eat and how much goes into the production of what we can so easily take for granted. It also taught us about how essential the workers are at every stage of the process.
We talk about essential workers today in these pandemic times. We see how dedicated and important they are as we continue to deal with returning to some kind of normal. I find myself praying for a new category of worker these days, the essential worker who has been working among us all along and who we never noticed or appreciated until our world all but stopped without them. Perhaps we can come out of this pandemic with a deeper appreciation of berry pickers, grocery store workers, toilet paper manufacturers, sanitizer makers, the so-called little guys and gals who are as essential as anyone who contributes to the welfare of each and every one of us.
The next time I go for an ice cream treat, I will remember what went into the making of this treat and even though black cherry is my favorite, I’m going to order strawberry and say a prayer for the persons who picked the strawberries for my dish of ice cream. It is essential that I do this.
Sister Mary Thill is a Sylvania Franciscan Sister. She can be reached at mthill@sistersosf.org.
Strawberries are too delicate to be picked by machine…
Every strawberry you have ever eaten—every piece of fruit—has been picked by callused human hands.
Every piece of toast with jelly represents someone’s knees, someone’s aching back and hips, someone with a bandana on her wrist to wipe away the sweat.
+Alison Luterman
