I Cut Strawberries into Smaller Pieces Than Necessary

Dear Delyara, The child would have managed perfectly well with whole strawberries in the lunchbox, but I stood there with the knife making them smaller, neater, more ready, as if one more tiny act of preparation might somehow make the whole day kinder than it was likely to be anyway. That’s what I noticed while I was doing it. How often care comes out of me as over-preparation. Not because I am naturally organised. Because somewhere in me is the belief that if I think far enough ahead, soften enough edges, prevent enough avoidable discomfort, maybe the people I love will feel the world as gentler than I often do. Of course the strawberries were not about strawberries. They were about protection. About love trying to arrive before pain does. About mothers and their ridiculous hopeful gestures against a world that does not always behave kindly with children. I closed the lunchbox and felt emotional in a way that had nothing to do with fruit.