Strawberry Bond

Eton Mess is a delightful mess

Photo: Carson Downing, Foodstyling: Kelsey Moylan, Props: Breanna Ghazali / Midwest Living

Strawberries arrive in early summer, as did my girl, the one with the strawberry curls. She’s always considered the fruit family. My blue-eyed boy takes after the other side, which he first made clear by grabbing a pancake, stuffing it into his toothless mouth, and grinning blueberry blue.

We might have spent our summer afternoons picking berries, had we lived near dirt. Condo dwellers on Chicago’s North Side, we foraged instead in the grocery aisle and farmers market. We chopped the berries into snacks or dropped them into muffins—and once, on a whim, swirled them into fragrant pink and blue finger paint, which made a delightful mess. Then we packed our sand buckets, dashed up Lake Shore Drive, and jumped in the lake.

Those sunny days came streaming back one recent weekend when, in an attempt to declutter, I cracked open a closet. I meant to reach in and toss out. Instead, the clutter reached out and held fast. The hobbyhorse, who once galloped the living room paddock, whinnied. (Her soft head, at some remove from her sturdy stick, had spent years awaiting my veterinary skills.) The hopelessly heavy computer slumped, screen to keyboard. Plugged in, it shuddered to life, its desktop as dense with photos and homework as it was on the day, circa 2005, when I’d planned to wipe its memory. On the floor, the art stack rustled.

I crouched and touched each stiff page, smiling over the blue bunny, the pink strawberry, the mess of purples swirled by eager fingers, ones that now punch keyboards in distant cities. I traced the grooves in the paint, traveling, along each loop, the aching distance from now to then.

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Order special-edition (all hearts!) Strawberry Brown-Butter Shortbread Cookies for Mothers Day