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Strawberry season came in hot that year — a July so thick with sun you could’ve fried your morals on the rocks outside the cottage. The four sisters — Ruth, Nora, Beulah, and Lois — had gathered at Stony Lake for their annual sisterly sojourn, as was tradition. No husbands, no children, no complicated casseroles. Just the girls, a lake, and one noble goal: strawberry shortcake.
Now, folks in Ontario might not talk like this, but these sisters were raised in the Southern church of hospitality, with a mother who’d whip your behind and your cream with the same authority. And while they all lived far and wide now — Ruth a high school principal, Beulah running a baby goat yoga studio in Vancouver, and Nora and Lois both knee-deep in Toronto life — they never missed a summer.
By midday, the sun was stomping around like it owned the place. They piled into Beulah’s scuffed-up Subaru with empty baskets, wide-brimmed hats, and the kind of ambition that only comes from childhood nostalgia and rosé spritzers. The strawberry fields spread before them like red confetti on a green quilt. They picked and sweated and laughed, swatting at deerflies with the grace of four women who had long stopped caring how they looked doing it.
“Oh Lord,” Nora said, bending down and creaking like a porch swing. “I just felt my hamstring whisper ‘no more.’”
“Mine screamed,” said Ruth, flicking a beetle off her tank top. “I think it cursed in German.”
They returned with enough berries to start a roadside business. Back at the cottage — a weathered beauty with peeling blue shutters and a porch screened in like it had secrets — they got to work. Ruth made the shortcakes, dense and golden. Beulah whipped the cream by hand, cursing with charm and flourish. Nora hulled strawberries with surgical precision. Lois was in charge of plating and playlist.
“Don’t you dare play anything modern,” Beulah warned. “This is a Nat King Cole moment, not Taylor Swift.”
Outside, bugs tap-tap-tapped against the screens like tiny salesmen. Boats burbled past, carrying sunburned families and dogs with tongues flapping in joy. The kitchen steamed with warmth and sugar. They baked, chilled, layered. Then — the crowning touch — they poured mimosas into jelly jar glasses and carried everything out to the porch.
The table was set with gingham, the centerpiece was a mason jar of wildflowers and clippings from the raspberry bush, and the sun was beginning its long orange sigh over the lake.
“This,” Ruth said, lifting her glass, “is what we survive winter for.”
“I’ll toast to that,” said Beulah, already licking whipped cream off her knuckle.
They ate like queens with bare feet, laughing until the loons began their evening holler. By dessert’s end, they were pink-cheeked and sticky-fingered, their plates scraped clean.
Somewhere between the second round of mimosas and the fourth retelling of the story where Nora fell in the lake wearing her Sunday dress, Lois said, “Let’s never skip this.”
And no one had to agree out loud. It was understood, like summer storms and sisterly love — loud, messy, sweet, and always returning.
Order Fine Art Print of ‘Strawberry Season’ here.
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