The other day while cleaning out a random cupboard, I started thinking about strawberries.

This particular strawberry story comes from my recent year working at a bush Alaska school, and it goes like this:

“I’m sorry,” said Jane from Food Service. “I’m sending you some fresh fruit for the school, and I just learned that [insert name of culprit] held the five cases of strawberries for almost a week before passing them along to me. They might be in kind of rough shape.”

My teacher principal* apartment in Twin Hills was situated such that I could look out the window and watch for the small charter plane that was to bring my strawberries and other goodies. Jane had explained to me that the pilot would wait until I arrived to unload. I didn’t feel like waiting up at the airport for any length of time, so I got my winter gear on, started up the four-wheeler, and while it idled, watched for the plane to appear. Eventually I had to go to the bathroom, and when I finally got back, having laboriously un-instated and reinstated my coat and snowpants, the plane was up there waiting. It was too far to see if the pilot was glaring at me.

I jumped on the four-wheeler and raced up to the airport with the aluminum cart bouncing along behind. I hoped said cart wouldn’t pick this moment to pop loose from its mooring, as it was often wont to do when someone was in a hurry. This was always especially annoying because the only way to re-secure the hitch mechanism was to hold it with one hand and use the other hand to pound on it with a rock.

But I digress. I reached the airport with the cart still firmly attached. The pilot saw me coming and got out of the plane to start unloading. The cases of strawberries looked beautiful from a respectful distance, and there were the added delights of raspberries, blueberries, mandarin oranges, and tiny watermelons that had somehow escaped their bonds and were rolling all over the floor of the plane. I asked the pilot if he had encountered some turbulence, but he either didn’t get, or chose not to acknowledge, the joke.

Back at school, after putting the watermelons, oranges and berries away, I sorted the strawberries. Some I put back in the boxes and stored in the refrigerator, some I pitched into the nearest garbage can, and for some I administered a bit of TLC. These last I washed in vinegar water, sliced off the rotten portions, and froze the rest (maybe the kids would like to make strawberry tarts?). I tried to save as much as I could, because fresh fruit doesn’t grow on trees in bush Alaska. (That’s mostly because there aren’t any trees! Ha ha!)

But let me ask you this: is sorting strawberries a good metaphor for one’s life choices? Is metaphor even the right term? I don’t know. But it does occur to me that for every large or small collection of treasures that wanders into my purview, I have three choices: keep it as it is, let it go, or (perhaps) make it into something useful and beautiful and entirely new.

It’s not always easy to know which choice to make. But I’m working on it.

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*Q: How do you know when there is a principal in the room?

  A: She will tell you.