My mom has become convinced that cherry tomatoes are not real tomatoes, but some genetically manufactured fake. I told her they’re just a different variety. She blew me off.
I didn’t understand it. I’ve seen Mom eat cherry tomatoes. In our packaged dinners with their packaged salads, I’ve swapped my cherry tomatoes for her cucumbers.
When I described this to a friend, she said, “She doesn’t recognize them.”
My friend was right. I’m willing to bet that when Mom grew up on the farm, their vegetable garden had full-sized tomatoes but no cherry tomatoes. They would have been unusual on a Nebraska farm in the 1940s. Mom’s mind is reverting to the mind of her youth.
The solution is not to Google “difference between cherry tomatoes and regular tomatoes” and then explain to my mother that while cherry tomatoes differ from regular tomatoes (smaller, sweeter, longer shelf life, slightly higher calories, slightly more lycopene), they are still tomatoes.
The solution is, when we get our packaged salads, to take her cherry tomatoes and cucumbers (which she has never liked) and give her my black olives.
PS: Best gift ever for someone who repeatedly asks, “What day is it?”
Chewing the Cud of Good
Thankful for generous friends, and reminders that I have friends all over the place.
I wish I had learned earlier when my mother began losing the present and fell into the past. What a simple act to join her world. However, once I did, we both enjoyed our time together as I learned to settle in and let the moment exist for each of us.
And does it really matter if cherry tomatoes are real? Thanks for sharing your moments.
Kathryn, you’re right, it doesn’t matter. Mom could say the moon’s a balloon and I would agree with her, or at least, not protest.