Remember When...

Tonight as I was hulling the strawberries that I bought at the grocery store this afternoon (holy $1.99/lb) for an after-church snack tomorrow, and a stray strawberry would find its way into my mouth rather than the bowl I got this huge wave of memory. Like the flavour of a strawberry was actually the memory itself.

Do you remember on Saturday evenings, when your dad would come home from doing groceries with a huge flat of those little green baskets of strawberries, and despite all the other mountains of groceries that he bought, everyone would just eat strawberries for dinner until their bellies couldn't take it anymore? And how good they tasted that very first day? And how much more awesome they tasted when your dad hulled them for you and piled them into a clean white bowl?

And how you would get a second bowl of strawberries and sprinkle a little bit of sugar on top and call it your dessert bowl?

And remember how every time your dad bought strawberries your older sister would say, "I don't like strawberries." And every time she said that your dad would respond by saying, "Really?!" like it was brand new information. And you would think to yourself, "Who doesn't like strawberries?!" and then you'd just grin because there was more for you.

Or remember on Sunday afternoons how all the kids would be playing or reading or sleeping or watching Ben Hur or the Ten Commandments (the only 2 movies on the 'Sunday approved' list for such a long time) and they would eventually all make their way to the family room around 5pm, just in time for the Wonderful World of Disney to start. And we'd all laugh as we watched Donald Duck and mom would make cinnamon toast that was just so cinnamonny and perfectly golden brown toasted and her sugar/cinnamon ratio was bang on? Remember those tall white tupperware salt and pepper shakers that she used to keep her perfect sugar/cinnamon mixture in, but somehow only SHE could sprinkle it on the toast 'just right'?

And remember how "Racoons" would come on just after Disney, so everyone would linger and watch as Cyril Sneer would try to take over the forest, one more time?

Remember going to bed that night feeling so satisfied and happy and like this is exactly the way life would always be?

Parents are the best.