What’s the best thing about becoming a great-grandmother? Ask my mom, and she might rave about the impossible sweetness of a newborn baby’s tiny face, or the stupor-inducing scent of his downy head.
But she may also mention the free strawberries she received, after racing to a pick-your-own berry farm just moments after the closed sign was hung. My mom drove in anyway, and explained her urgent reason for crashing the gate: She was going to meet her new great-grandson for the very first time, she’d promised to bring the family a strawberry shortcake, and she was desperate for the fruit. Could she possibly spend a few minutes in their strawberry patch, gathering just enough for her recipe?
The farm owner looked at her own two smiling teenage daughters, then nodded towards three baskets of freshly picked berries on a nearby table. “Take them,” she said.
“What do you mean, take them?” My mother asked, startled. “How much do I owe you for them?”
“Take them,” the other woman insisted. Yes, she was bestowing the berries on my mom as a gift. In honour of her new status as great-grandmother. And if you know my mother (well, most of you probably don’t – but you can take my word for it), she always appreciates a good, solid act of kindness. But she’s especially touched if it happens to be garden related.
Welcome to the world, baby Chase. There are a lot of awfully nice people in it.
And sometimes, they give you strawberries.
50 Good Deeds 