Gather around
lend me your ear
Grab a cup of coffee
I have a story to tell you.
Bleeding Hearts and Rescued Strawberries
I used to work in a Ben Franklin store, the first year I was there, we sold bedding plants. At the end of the season my boss was tossing out the dead or near dead plants.
There was a Dicentra or Bleeding Heart, nothing more than a droopy stick with a tish of green on it.
I brought it home to Grandma, she promptly stuck in in the ground and watered it. I kind of forgot about it.
Grandma worked for years at a couple grocery stores in town. I remember most the Family Thrift Center right across the street from her house. She worked in the produce department, we would pop in to see her and often she was in the back, cleaning up the fruits and veggies. Every spring she was going through flats of strawberries....sifting through, placing the good ones in the green plastic baskets and covering them with clear wrap. (she often had a burn on her arm from the heat of the wrapping machine)
To the side she would place those berries that were over ripe, mushy, bruised......no good.
Her boss would let her take them home and she would stand for hours trimming off the bad,
saving the good,
sometimes the tiniest piece of a berry.
Those tiny pieces were then made into the best strawberry jam!
She found use for what others would have given up on, work that was too tedious, easier to avoid.
She scrubbed her basement floor, took every dish out of the cupboard and bleached them twice a year. She cleaned the walls and windows, crocheted afghans, made quilts and
Christmas stockings for everyone.
If you came in the back door and passed by the washer and dryer there was always fresh baked goods, waiting ....smelling divine.
She liked jigsaw puzzles and every evening could be found nodding off beside the lamp doing crosswords.
Grandma worked hard but you almost never saw her do it, she was up early and did more in the first half of a day than I do in a week. I am named after her, Irene, my middle name and I like that.
She used to watch Willard Scott on the Today show...he would do the birthdays of those who had turned 100. She made me promise if she lived to that age and we put her photo on there ......her teeth would be in and her hair combed!
One of my uncles married late in life, his wife died only a few years later, leaving behind 4 and 6 year old boys.
She raised them, not full time but near enough.
Those little ones hurt by life found refuge and love at Grandma's house.
Rescued strawberries.....bleeding hearts.....tender and bruised, limp, worn out.
She gave them all she had.
Once she said to me through tears, "They say God never closes a door unless he opens a window, I can't see the window."
I don't know what God had in his purpose when he took their mother, young and active...seemingly healthy but God is good and that I trust.
We never know what will come along so we must be ready to give all we have, to help those who are bruised by life. Wilting.....perhaps dying
physically
mentally
spiritually
See what is good and work with that, add to it love like sugar to jam.
Remember jam sets through intense heat, once we weather that heat we have something wonderful..set...more solid, with purpose.
Are there strawberries in your life that need a little love...bleeding hearts that need rescue? That plant I brought her grew big and strong, a little love and water...rest beneath the shade trees, it grew for years and years. What was nearly thrown in the trash was blooming.
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