3 — Wednesday, October 13, 2021 // The Statement
Strawberries and other growing pains

Claire had come 

to resent strawber-

ries. The color, the 
taste, the way the 
seeds got stuck in 
her teeth — every-
thing about them 
exhausted her. She 

stared down at the 

plant, nudging the stem 

with her foot. She felt like 

the berries were mocking her, peering up 
from under the thick, green leaves. Claire 
reached down and plucked one from the 
plant, dropping it into the bucket with more 
than a little hostility. By the 
end of the day, her hands 
would be red and raw 
from the scratchy fibers 
on the underside of the 
leaves, a feeling no 
amount of lotion would 
be able to soothe. When 
she’d finished one plant, she 
moved on to the next, follow-
ing the row all the way to the 
other end of the garden. 

This wasn’t exactly what she’d envi-

sioned for her summer — or her life for that 
matter. By the end of her senior year, she’d 
been unemployed and scrambling, looking 
desperately for something that would be as 
impressive as the jobs her friends had taken 
in New York and Chicago. That’s when 
she found La Ferme Tourrette. Claire had 
been mindlessly scrolling online when she 
found WWOOF, Worldwide Opportuni-
ties for Organic Farms. It’s a program that 
connects people to farms around the world 
where they work in exchange for room and 
board. She read the reviews posted under 
pictures of smiling twenty-somethings 
holding armfuls of produce. 

Claire had imagined herself at a quaint 

but tasteful cottage in the south of France, 
reading in the grass, swimming in ponds, 
learning to speak French and finding farm-
ers markets that were très adorable. It was 
the kind of thing unique, interesting people 
did. She imagined herself saying things like 
“Oh, I just sort of hopped on a plane and 
went.” She’d come home with honey that 
she’d helped make on the farm, an amazing 
tan and stories of dates with French men on 
the back of mopeds. 

What she forgot to imagine was the 

whole farming aspect. 

In theory, she loved the idea of working 

out in the sun, being surrounded by plants 
all day. Once she had actually gotten to the 
farm, though, Claire quickly realized that 
her idealized vision was not grounded in 
reality. The lavender plants were spiky, 
it was impossible to get the carrots out of 
the ground and there was no one to talk 
to in the field. She had never done manual 
labor before (something that had seem-

ingly slipped her mind when applying for 
the program in the first place), and she was 
quickly discovering that it wasn’t her forte. 

As she pulled the berries from their 

stems, she thought of Cowbelles, a movie 
from her childhood about two spoiled girls 
forced to work in their dad’s dairy plant to 
learn the value of hard work. Following 
the lead of cinematic tropes, Claire had 
been expecting some life-changing, “Eat, 
Pray, Love” experience, but so far she didn’t 
know how much she was really learning 
about hard work — other than that she 
didn’t like it. She hated getting up early and 
going to sleep exhausted. The feeling of dirt 
under her fingernails made her skin crawl. 
Maybe she just wasn’t the type for “per-

sonal growth.” Maybe she was too shal-

low or maybe she just wasn’t trying 

hard enough. And after what felt like 
an endless number of strawberries, 
Claire got to the end of the row, 
putting her hands on her hips to 
take a breath. 

“Es-tu fini?” Maryanne, the 

farm’s matriarch asked.

French fluency was one of the 

program’s few requirements — crite-

ria that Claire definitely didn’t meet. So as 
soon as she’d booked her flights, she went 
rummaging through her parents’ library 
and found an old, beat-up French diction-
ary. Claire kept the dictionary tucked in her 
back pocket, keeping a mental list of all the 
words to look up when no one was watch-
ing. She’d picked up on the basics pretty 
quickly: Aller, go. Finir, finish. La ferme, 
the farm.

“Non, j’ai deux en plus,” Claire respond-

ed. No, I have two more. 

Maryanne was nice enough but dis-

tinctly French. She was quick speaking 
and didn’t like explaining things twice. She 
would never hesitate to berate Claire on her 
poor attempts at the language. 

“J’ai deux de plus,” Maryanne corrected. 
Maryanne had two children — both 

boys ages 10 and 13 — and ran the farm on 
her own. She’d been divorced some years 
back, but rarely spoke of her ex-husband. 
Maryanne never shared any details, not 
even his name. The boys, Luca and Paul, 
were sweet yet rowdy, used to having free 
rein over the property while Maryanne 
was working or cooking or dealing with the 
vendors that worked at the markets. Claire 
had a hard time connecting with them. 
Even beyond the language barrier, the boys 
were a bit too old to see their new addition 
as an older sister, yet the age difference 
was a little too large for them to organi-
cally become friends. Not to mention 
that while Maryanne slowed down 
her speaking so Claire could keep up, 
the boys made no such concession, 
exchanging rapid-fire French between 
themselves all day long. 

When Claire had finished plucking 

the last strawberry, she went inside to 
take a shower. Her room was small but 
nicely decorated with yellow walls, rustic 
wooden furniture and a vase of daffodils 
on the window sill. Maryanne had put the 
flowers there before Claire had arrived, 
but a month later, they were wilted and 
starting to lose their petals. She looked at 
the wrinkled stems, thinking about how 
much they had changed since her arrival 
and how she herself had not. She went over 
and started brushing the dry, fallen pieces 
into her hand as she looked outside. Claire 
knew the house must be very old by the 
imperfections in the glass window panes. 
New, manufactured glass all looked the 
same, but with old glass, when you look 
really closely, you can see a subtle pattern 
and tiny bubbles, blemishes from the way 
that it was set that cause the light to reflect 
just a little bit differently. Claire loved glass 
like that. 

As she looked out onto the fields, she 

thought about what she’d be doing if she 
were at home. Her mom would be cooking 
dinner. Her dad would have PBS News-
Hour on too loud in the family room. 
Her mom would make a com-
ment about how the TV was 
making too much noise but 
only quietly and passive-
aggressively to herself. 
Maybe her brother 
would come over. 
Claire would be sit-
ting 
on 

the window bench 
in her room, 

reading with the win-
dows open so she 

could listen to the rain — it rained all sum-
mer in Seattle. She’d be debating how to 
tell her parents she was going to bars with 
friends, and she’d be out late. 

But instead, she was here. 
Exhausted and alone in the countryside 

West of Avignon. Yet as much as she hated 
the strawberries and wished her French 
was better, Claire wasn’t unhappy. She 
wasn’t all that happy either. She was just 
there. 

She would say she was content, a word 

Claire didn’t use often. At home, every day 
either felt like the best or worst she’d ever 
had. Some days, she’d go to the grocery 
store ecstatic about the week ahead. She’d 
plan 
elaborate meals and spend 

way 
too much money on 
clothes online and 

get two iced cof-
fees because on 
a day as beau-
tiful as that, 
how could she 

resist? It was 
on one of these 

ecstatic days that 

she’d booked the 

trip to France in the 

first place. Others, she’d be in bed all day, 
completely unable to do more than the 
absolute bare minimum. But, on the farm, 
she didn’t have the highest highs and the 
lowest lows. She just had 
days. Sure, she wasn’t 
frolicking through 
fields to “The 
Sound 
of 

Music” 
soundtrack-
like 
she’d 

imagined, 
but 

things were alright. 

Claire didn’t have 

the slightest idea what 
she would do when her 
time on the farm was 
over. The end date was just 
three and a half weeks away 
now. She felt just the faintest prickles of 
anxiety creeping up whenever she thought 
of it. She’d always felt an undefined sense 
of excitement about her post-college 20s, 
never anything as concrete as a job or 
where she would live — just an amorphous 

inclination towards the exciting. At 

some point, she’d have to figure out 
what to do, but there were a lot of 
strawberries to pick in the mean-

time. 

When she was done showering, 

Claire went downstairs to help Mary-
anne with dinner. Even with her pocket 
dictionary, Claire only had an operational 
understanding of French, and Maryanne 
had made no effort to learn any English 
(almost as a matter of principle, Claire 
thought), so these downtimes passed 
wordlessly between the two. Over the 
summer, the two women had become 
accustomed to each other, developing 
something that wasn’t quite friendship. 
Camaraderie, maybe? Or was it simply a 
mutual understanding? Whatever their 
relationship was, it made the silence com-
forting. 

Claire and Maryanne moved around 

the kitchen in near synchronization, listen-
ing to the sizzle of shallots in hot oil and 
the satisfying snap of lettuce being torn. 
Luca and Paul came screaming through 
the kitchen, knocking a pile of napkins to 
the floor as they bee-lined their way to the 
backyard. 

“Casse-toi!” Maryanne yelled, long after 

they were out of earshot. 

Stop that. 
Every day as they made dinner, Mary-

anne poured a glass of wine for herself 
and Claire. As the light got softer and their 
shadows got longer, she grabbed the glass-
es. Claire handed her the bottle opener, and 
they both watched as the sun started to dip 
below the horizon. 

“Es-tu heureux ici?” Maryanne asked.
“Yes, I’m happy.” 

BY LANE KIZZIAH, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT

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