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To the Little Boy in the Strawberry Fields Whose Name I Never Knew:

I hate picking berries.  Strawberries, raspberries, marionberries—I hate picking them all.  Pluck.  Pluck.  Pluck.  In the rain.  In the heat.  In the slugs, the mud, and the rotting berries.  Back-breaking work even for the eleven-year-old kid that I was those four decades ago.  Pluck.  Pluck.  Pluck.  Five cents a pound.  A dollar for a full crate was a good day for me, though rumor had it that one fifteen-year-old girl sometimes made ten dollars a day.  Just not my talent, I guess.  Sure, I learned how to whistle in the rows.  Sure, I filled my belly with the luscious berries.  But know this: I hate picking berries even to this day and will pay with great alacrity for a nicely mounded crate filled by someone else–anyone else, perhaps that fifteen-year-old girl now middle aged.

You had just finished a full crate to my skimpy quarter crate, but I hardly noticed; everyone finished before I did.  You left it in the next row over and headed to the old wooden outhouse.  Again, I didn’t notice; I was off in some daydream, most likely.  But the three older girls two rows over noticed.  They stood above me and said, “We’ll cut you in if you don’t tell.”  With a submissive nod I agreed.  They poured your berries into our crates, and we all went back to where we’d been, though at the time I didn’t know you can’t go back to innocence.  I took a peek at you when you returned.  Your lips quivered, but you didn’t say a thing.  You quietly began to work, refilling your empty crate.  I made an extra twenty-five cents that day.

Oh, little boy, forgive my laziness, forgive my greed, but most of all I beg that you forgive my weakness.  I’m so sorry if you were angry, if you were hurt.  I’m so sorry if you were disillusioned.  I’d go back and change things if I could, but I cannot.

As a child I confessed in a darkened stall to a hidden priest such sins as calling my brother names, lying to my mother, or taking an apple from the fruit bowl without permission.  And when there were no real sins to confess, I made up ones such as kidnapping my sister’s pet rock, coveting the neighbor’s gorgeous fourteen-year-old son, or taking God’s name in vain when I bit my tongue on the communion wafer.  But I never confessed to stealing your berries.

I confess to you now and to all who will listen that I am guilty and have been for decades of theft from a hard-working and earnest little boy.  The only way I can think to make amends is to try hard to be a good and giving woman.  Even so, it will take the rest of my life to repay the interest accrued on that twenty-five cents worth of berries I stole from you.

Submitted by: Susan McElheran