Melanie awoke the next morning to the tranquil silence of mother nature, unperturbed by the light swish of water running down a nearby stream or the melodic symphony of birds chirping above her. Today was a new day and she wanted to make it as productive as she could. She knew she owed her a family an apology for her behavior from the past couple of weeks. Melanie had found herself in a complicated spot…wanting advancement but having no idea or initiative of how to get it. So, she took it out on her family, and she was unbelievably sorry about it.
Noticing that her family lay asleep in the tent still, Melanie decided to explore the neighboring woods. It seemed she had walked for hours until she came upon the stream of water she had heard earlier. She stood there fore mere moments and sat down on a bench she spotted. Everything seemed so peaceful. She closed her eyes and listened to the distant sounds of nature, listened to the sun touch the leaves as the earth begin to settle and warm beneath her feet. She reached her hand up to push loose strays of hair behind her ear and felt the wind caress her skin right below her ear. She smiled.
Memories of sitting outside on her back porch and watching her mother pick white carrots from the small garden beside the steps came back to her in a rush. Memories of wanting to tend the garden, but lacking the required skill flooded her mind and she begin to laugh.
She turned her head at the sound and her heart warmed at the sight of him. Emmanuel had always had the ability to make her heart skip a beat or stop completely. “I was thinking about my family.”
“Oh?” Emmanuel took the empty seat beside her and wrapped his arms around her pulling her into him. He could feel the goosebumps forming on her skin and begin to rub the area slowly and gently. “What about them?”
“Well, I remembered this one time I wanted to help my mom out in the garden an-”
“You had a garden when you were younger?”
She snuggled up closer to him. “Yeah, it wasn’t big or anything. Just enough for my mom to grow these vegetables she liked to put in this stew. My dad loved her stew, especially in the winter.”
“Sounds yummy.” Emmanuel smiled and thought about his own family.
“And this one time I wanted to go in the garden so bad,” she begin. “And my mom had just started growing strawberries…they looked so big and ripe, nothing I’d ever seen before.”
“You really wanted to eat them, huh?” Emmanuel stared down at her with his eyebrow raised.
“I was going to eat one or two…just to make sure they were ready. So I went into the shed to grab a pair of my mom’s gloves and snuck over to the strawberries. I was just about to pop one in my mouth and I heard my dad yell from the porch ‘Girl put them strawberries down, right now!’ He had one of those James E. Jones voices.”
Emmanuel couldn’t help but laugh, and Melanie soon followed with her soft giggles.
“What did you do then?” Emmanuel asked.
“I mean I dropped them as soon as I heard him. He came stomping over with his finger pushed out and said ‘Melanie these strawberries are not ready to be eaten’ and he had me feel them.”
“For what?” Emmanuel asked.
Melanie held her hand out as if holding an invisible strawberry. “There’s a softness to a strawberry right around the part where your thumb rests. And there’s a rich redness, like dark wine all over and it smells so sweet.” Melanie smiled up at Emmanuel. “My dad taught me that that day. A week later when I went to go check them, they were ready to be picked.”
“Ahh, there’s a science to everything isn’t it?” Emmanuel joked.
Melanie was quiet for awhile before answering. “Yeah.” And then, “I’m so sorry for how I treated you and the kids. I’ve just been under all this pressure at work to create these masterpieces and I can’t think of anything worthwhile to write, you know?”
Emmanuel looked at her. “You just told me a beautiful story just now.”
“What?”
“About your dad and the strawberries…about your life with your family when you were younger.” Emmanuel stared down at her. “Sometimes we don’t have to invent something brand new, sometimes it’s about reinvention.”
Melanie reached up to the rub the stubble along Emmanuels jaw and pulled him down for a quick kiss. “I am so in love with you Emmanuel Fernandez.”
“I am so in love with you Melanie Avery-Fernandez.”
They kissed and then, “Ew mom and dad!”
“Guess our kids have finally woken up,” Emmanuel whispered down by her ear.
Melanie shivered at the vebrato and sat up to see her son looking out into the water.
“Dad, can we go fishing today?”
“Sure, why not kiddo.” Emmanuel planted another kiss on Melanie’s head and walked over to Landen. He turned back and winked at Melanie.
Yeah, she had a story now… a few to be exact.