The First Strawberry

My daughter is three, and today she picked her first strawberry from our little container garden on the balcony.

She stared at it for a long time. She smelled it. She showed it to the cat. She held it up to my face and said, very seriously, "This is a baby one." Then she ate it in two bites and announced, "It tastes like summer and dirt."

I wrote it on a sticky note and put it on the fridge, next to her drawing of a purple horse. Then I called my mom to tell her, because my mom is the one who gave me the strawberry plant in the first place, in a coffee can, with a note that said "for the little one."

My mom laughed and said I used to say things like that too. She said when I was three I told her the ocean "smelled like a giant's sandwich." I don't remember that at all.

That's the funny part of being a parent. You get to hear the world described for the first time all over again. I've been thinking about that sentence all day.