Maria gave Mom and Anna hugs.
Mauru chased after Jon, who shrieked as he ran down the rows of strawberry beds covered in black plastic to prevent weeds from growing and to keep the fruit clean.
“You break ’em, you buy ’em!” Raymond shouted.
Nate wanted to sit by a bed of strawberries, so we let him. Sacha walked up to him and offered him a strawberry, which he took. We all thought this was so cute that we whipped out our phones and took photos of them sitting side by side, eating strawberries.
“That’s my grandson,” Dad said. “He sure is making his granddad proud today.”
Maria laughed. It was so good to see her laugh.
She was the first friend I made when I moved here with my parents after completing undergrad in 2026. Maria was in the middle of nursing school, and we met at the In-&-Down Burger at lunchtime one day. Her car got a flat as she was about to pick up her order; my car was behind hers.
She’d just gotten married then, and Alexander had just been deployed. Because of the flat, she was going to be late for a class, so she jumped out of her car, walked up to mine, knocked on the window, apologized, and asked if I’d help put her spare in place. I acted like I hadn’t see her.
People behind us honked and yelled. One man shouted that if he didn’t get his “Double-Double Burger soon enough,” he’d be suing all our “asses for emotional distress.”
“Please,” Maria asked me. “I’m not crazy or anything. I just need to get to class soon. Can you help change my flat?”
Another customer, a mechanic, helped Maria change her flat as I stood there watching for moral support. I felt awful when Maria admitted that she couldn’t call her family, who lived in Mexico City, and her husband had just been deployed, so she depended on strangers for help in moments like these. She had a few friends, but they were all in class by now, where she would have been but for her flat.
There are people whose kindness and thoughtfulness is so piercing that it can cut through you like a knife. Maria, for me, has always been one of those people. Even when we disagreed, there was something so innocent about her that made me want to protect her from the world. I ended up apologizing to Maria for not being much help that day, and she said, “That’s OK.”
I told her that we’d just moved to San Diego, and she said, “Ah, so that’s why you’re not as friendly. You must be from New York City. We have lots of New Yorkers here, and their first two years here, they can’t get the New York way of life out of them, so they’re suspicious of everyone, and they talk nonstop of ‘the City.’ Then they relax a little and realize that San Diego is a city, too, just with much nicer and more relaxed people and better weather . . . and just a little cheaper.”
That was when the drought was just beginning.
“You look like you need a friend,” Maria said. “Maria . . .”
She offered me her hand in greeting, and I shook it.
Anna was now looking for the right moment to break the news of their swinging to Mom and Dad. Even as I look at the photo that Raymond took of all of us at Strawberries Forever, I still don’t understand what it was about the entire Virdis family that made them want to confess.
Elisa had to tell you about her relationships, the ins and outs, the highs and lows, and if you were willing to listen and promised not to tell her parents, she’d also let you in on what she liked most about her partner’s body.
Mauru barely had a private thought on most things (at least with me). I knew his first memory (falling in love with the smell of his neighbor, Libra, who had since become a teacher in Hawaii before joining the military. Libra smelled just like “ginger snaps right out of the box, babe.”). I also knew my husband’s strange thoughts about mangoes (“fleshy and juicy with just enough tartness to make you just want more and more, Jan.”). And I knew his politically incorrect thoughts about football and baseball (“catnip for cisgender men like me and the chicks that dig us, babe.”).
As for Giulio, he still couldn’t forgive himself for not being there when his dad passed away from heart failure. He also disliked several words (“whoever made them up needs a CT scan, Jan: ‘Discombobulate.’ ‘Eye-popping.’ ‘Impactful.’ ‘Headspace.’ ‘Hellacious.’ ‘Oodles.’ ‘Pimple.’”).
Jon coughed.
There was a little dust in the greenhouse air at Strawberries Forever, and Mauru sneezed. I wasn’t worried, though. Strawberries Forever was the evidence I needed that you could still grow things in San Diego, and you and your family only needed to adapt a little. Everything was going to be OK.
“Bless you,” Sacha said as she held Nate’s hand when he sneezed as well.
“So,” Anna blurted out to Mom and Dad, “we’re swingers.”
Maria looked at me, raised her eyebrows, and I nodded. Maria covered her mouth and laughed.
“Gazelle and Derick,” Anna repeated, “Giulio and I are swingers.”
Mauru shot a stare at his mom. “I’ve told you before,” he said, “not in front of my kids.”
“Well,” Anna said—
“I don’t care what you do behind closed doors, but you don’t bring that stuff up in front of my kids or my in-laws, Mom. Don’t embarrass me.”
“It’s all right, son,” Dad said. “We knew something was going on. We just didn’t know what.”
“What do you mean you knew, Dad?” I asked. “We said nothing.”
“You didn’t have to,” Mom said. “You just get a sense for things. There came a time when Mauru stopped talking about his parents, and Janet tried to make everything sound like it was OK. We knew something was going on, but it wasn’t any of our business. Still isn’t.”
“For us,” Anna said to Mom and Dad, “you’re family. It’s been a while since we’ve all seen each other, and we wanted you to hear it from us. News has a way of traveling. This is our new normal, swinging, but what’s acceptable to some has a way of being offensive to others, especially to those closest to you, who think you’re hurting them or yourself by doing something they would never choose for themselves or for you. That couldn’t be further from the truth. We’ve never had more fun in our lives.”
“Well,” Mom said, “as long as it’s between one man and one woman at a time, I’ve got nothing against it.”
“At a time?” Maria laughed.
“Not that we’re interested in that kind of thing,” Dad said, trying to cover up for Mom. “We are a one-man-one-woman team, but you all get what we’re saying. As long as you’re safe, you’re taking care of yourselves, and you’re acting biblically while you’re doing what you do, then it’s really none of anyone’s business.”
“Well,” Anna said, “I’m not sure what’s biblical about it, and we’re not asking for permission. We’re just telling you all as family: this is who we are, and this is what we do.”
“It’s really none of our business,” Mom responded, “but I’m glad you told us because we were worried that something had happened between you and Mauru that was really hurting him inside, and we didn’t know what we could do to help him. If you hadn’t told us, and we found out on our own, I would have kept away from you all. That’s the moral of the story, I guess.”
Mauru had taken both Jon and Nate and had walked a distance. He had Nate on his shoulders as he held Jon by the hand. Mauru would never accept that part of his parents’ lives, but his mistake, which was often mine, was confusing acceptance with approval. Acceptance didn’t mean approving of something, it just meant that there was nothing in the world you could do to bend things to your will. Acceptance meant moving on with things, especially when you didn’t want to. Waiting until approval came was setting yourself up for frustration and disappointment.
Mom and Anna took out some cushions they’d tucked away in their canvas bags.
“Just make sure you don’t sit your asses on my strawberries! Not even ConfiPrice has such good strawberries!” Raymond yelled.
Mom and Anna pulled out tubs of clotted cream. They plu
cked strawberries, dipped them in clotted cream, and ate them. Then Anna took out her phone and selected a radio station that only played the top-rated girl band Almond Leather on a loop. Anna and Mom stood up and danced when Almond Leather’s zany hit “Momma Is King” came on.
What were they doing?
“You get to the age,” Mom said as she and Anna sat down on their cushions at the end of “Momma Is King,” “when you don’t care what people think. I read in a magazine that people eat strawberries like this in the parts of Europe where the weather is still good, so I decided to try it right here in America. I won’t be paying good money to go to Europe, so this is Europe right here in Carlsbad. I said to Anna, ‘Why don’t we stop for clotted cream on the way to Strawberries Forever so that we can live a little like those folks who still have some water to spare?’ And she loved the idea.”
“You really do get to that age,” Anna agreed. “You cherish the baggage you carry with you and all the people that go with it, and you realize you wouldn’t want anything any other way. If you want to listen to Almond Leather, you listen to Almond Leather. You don’t deprive yourself because of what people might say. Who cares, anyway? Whatever!”
“This is like the best day I’ve had in a long time,” Maria said. “It’s just wild.”
“Sit with us,” Mom said to Maria. “Come enjoy the strawberries and cream with us.”
“This,” Giulio said, “is embarrassing, Anna. What kind of example is it setting for the grandkids? Dancing in public!”
“I expected more from you, Mom,” Dad said. “Bringing cream and cushions, and dancing about like some homeless woman. You’d think you were ready for the assisted living center right about now.”
Mom and Anna ignored what the men said.
Mom and Anna moved down the rows of strawberries, turning left and right and plucking all the ripe strawberries about them, which they dipped in cream and held to the light until the cream glistened and ran a little. Then they bit into the strawberries and smiled. They went on like this, listening to Almond Leather for what seemed like an hour at least, and they got up and danced every time “Momma is King” came on.
When more people arrived, Mom and Anna told them that they had “reserved the two middle rows with Chatty Raymond over there,” so the newcomers were free to pluck strawberries from any row but the middle two.
I wondered if Mom and Anna were both having a senior moment, the kind you see in the Herald, where you read that two seniors escaped from an assisted living facility in Point Loma, and they were found walking in their pajamas days later in the Gaslamp Quarter, singing the Star-Spangled Banner, and asking if anyone had seen their great aunt, Barbara.
Mom and Anna occasionally plucked a green strawberry, smelled it, and finding the possibility of it “too bitter without wild honey,” cast it into the adjacent rows and said “Welcome” to those arriving, just as Raymond might. Then they laughed between themselves. I whispered to Maria and asked if I should call 911.
“What’s your emergency?” Maria asked.
“My mom is weird, and so is my mother-in-law.”
“What are they doing?”
“Sitting on cushions on private land, plucking strawberries, dipping them in clotted cream, and dancing to Almond Leather.”
Maria shook her head. “Not an emergency, ma’am.”
“You know what’s weird about San Diego?” Anna asked as she finished eating another strawberry dipped in clotted cream. “Drivers in San Diego give you the middle finger, Gazelle. When we visited Boston, over there, they all yell at you. In the Midwest, they all have shotguns, so they don’t yell or flip you the bird. They give you the ‘shotgun look,’ you know. Giulio and I call it ‘the Lethal Weapons League look.’ Out here, it’s like a city full of nothing but middle fingers up in the air wherever you go. No shotguns, no yelling, just middle fingers. We got two middle fingers yesterday. One in Hillcrest and the other in La Jolla. We’re wondering if it’s because of all the dust and heat. They must make you want to give strangers the finger.”
“La Jolla?” Mom said. “A middle finger in La Jolla? We’re too posh in La Jolla to give you the middle finger, Anna. We’ll just call the cops on you. What were you doing when we gave you the middle finger?”
La Jolla is a seaside community in San Diego with about 65,000 residents. Memorial University of California is there, so is St. Martin de Porres, the best private school in the state, as well as the Grizzly Art Institute, San Diego. La Jolla also has homes selling for up to $55 million. Mom and Dad bought their home not too far from the ocean just before we moved here in 2026.
“Well,” Anna responded, “we were preparing for an evening with friends.”
Mom looked confused.
“Well,” Anna clarified, “we kind of stalled at the traffic light because we were planning to have some friends over, Gazelle.”
“Ah! ‘Friends,’” Mom finally understood as she made air quotes. “Well,” Mom continued, “I don’t give any fingers to anyone. I have my own little prayer for the road. Psalm 23:4: “Yea, though I drive through the valley of the shadow of the glib people, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they punisheth mine glib enemies.”
Mom and Anna were cackling now like great old friends.
I’d seen them enjoy each other’s company before. I wasn’t sure, though, whether they’d truly enjoyed spending time with each other or whether they’d done it for Mauru and me. Anna and Giulio had even attended a church service with Mom and Dad at Living Heavens Church when Pastor Jim was out of town, and they hadn’t liked the service at all because it ran for two hours and they, as Catholics, were “used to fleeing the pews after about fifty minutes—and even then, only at Christmas and Easter.”
Neither Mom nor Dad held that against them, not even calling them “glib” or “smooth as butter,” and I realized something. When people really like you, they like you, no matter what you do. Those who like you are just going to like you, and those who don’t, no matter what you do, just won’t. Pastor Jim was someone Mom would never like because she enjoyed seeing in him a young version of Satan personified, somebody whose existence made her feel like she had at least achieved something in this world by not being “President Jim.” I personally liked Pastor Jim because he treated Dad and me as independent from Mom, whom he knew had devoted her time and resources to ousting him from Living Heavens.
Mauru returned with Jon and Nate, who were dirty since they’d been playing in the dust. Nate had a strawberry in both hands, which he didn’t want to share with Sacha when she asked for one. Dad and Giulio were talking to other guests, and Mom and Anna were moving down the second row, no longer eating strawberries and clotted cream, but filling the miniature baskets Raymond had given us, as well as their canvas bags, with as many strawberries as they could gather.
“Enjoy it now,” Anna said, “this could be the last year we see strawberries—”
“Especially if the Water Weirdos and their nonsense come to power,” Mom said. “They’ll be telling us to count the number of cups of water in each strawberry and how much hydrogen and oxygen it takes to cultivate an entire field of them.”
“You don’t know what you’ve got . . .” Anna nodded.
Anna stood up, stretched, and then sat down again on her cushion and breathed a sigh of relief. “I should take up yoga again,” she said. “When I grow up, I want to be a yoga instructor.”
“And I want to be a florist if they’re any flowers around when I retire,” Mom said. “You know, Anna, when Janet told us that she was thinking of becoming a legal secretary, I was initially hurt. We’d spent all that money on the University of the Finger Lakes only to have our daughter become a secretary. Derick had been telling his friends that Janet would work in the foreign service or some such thing one day, or she’d become a professor or something. I finally accepted that my daughter shouldn’t become something to make us happy because she’d only hate us when she real
ized that the time had passed her by and we were gone, and she was still miserable doing something she hoped would end soon.
“You work as long as I have as an accountant at a law firm, and you see misery, the very definition of misery, every day. You see the lists of drugs that attorneys are taking for anxiety, depression, and other stress-related illnesses. You smell the alcohol on some of the partners, and you see the red eyes of those associates, some of whom are addicted, and you realize that the search for more leaves you with less. You get more of one thing and less of yourself. I became an accountant because I heard that the pay and benefits were good. That was a long time ago now. My daughter became a legal secretary when she finally realized that I wouldn’t allow her to sit at home and eat my money until I died. I told her that she’d get none of it.”
Mom sneezed and said, “Excuse me,” as Maria and Anna said, “Bless you.”
“If Janet gave me grandchildren,” Mom continued, “all my money would go to them, all of it, and it surely will. I told Janet she’d better get off that expensive University-of-the-Finger-Lakes ass of hers and get herself a job. She became a legal secretary. Eventually, that didn’t bother me as much as the question of whether she’d be happy. In my time, you didn’t ask if a job made you happy, you asked if you were happy getting a paycheck. Now, happiness is everything. It’s the ‘happy culture’ these days, and I don’t blame them.
“Why be miserable when you’re going to have to wait till the Lord returns to be truly happy, and He might send you to hell? So, I will be a florist when I retire, and that’s why I’m not voting for the Water Weirdos, who’re against everything fun in this world. They even killed Eleena—someone I didn’t like till she spoke up for herself.”
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