I WAS FOUND ON A STRAWBERRY FARM: A MEMOIR FOR MY MOTHER Mary Sotz 7th Grade • Eliza Chappell Elementary School
In the year 1997 Mary Jude and Luis got married, two people truly in love and so happy. They tried for a baby, but in time they found out that Mary Jude couldn’t have children; she was infertile. By the year 2006, Mary Jude and Luis had both come to the acceptance point that they would probably never have children; adoption wasn’t something they could agree on, and they of course couldn’t have biological children, so Mary Jude prayed to Saint Jude, the patron saint of hopeless cases who she was named after. It can’t hurt, she thought. Mary Jude had a friend named Jim who owned a fruit farm, the main attraction being strawberries. There were 2 parts to the strawberries on Jim’s farm; you could go and just buy fresh picked strawberries, or you could pick the strawberries yourself. Now Mary and Luis had driven to this farm every June for many years, as June is prime strawberry season and Jim was their friend. This year, Mary Jude was going alone because Luis had to work. She was going to stay on the farm for a couple of nights, pick strawberries and bring them home. A week or so before the trip, Mary Jude got an email from Jim. The email stated that he needed help because there was a young Guatemalan woman working on the farm picking strawberries, but she had been caught without documents and had been taken to jail. Mary Jude felt her heart break for this woman, but she knew there was nothing she could do. 385
