How Cherry Tomatoes Almost Ruined My Life
From childhood delight to adult obsession
My earliest memory is of cherry tomatoes. I must have been about four years old when I picked one, still warm from the sun, from my mother’s garden.
The skin was tight, like an over-inflated balloon, and my tiny hands trembled with anticipation. I popped it into my mouth, and the moment it burst, I was smitten.
It was the first time I had experienced such an explosion of flavor — sweet, yet tangy, as if I were tasting the sun itself. From that moment on, cherry tomatoes became the fulcrum of my life, the axis around which everything else spun.
Summers were the best time of year for me, as that was when the cherry tomatoes were ripe and plentiful. My siblings and I would chase each other around the garden, each trying to stuff the most tomatoes into our mouths.
We’d laugh, the juice running down our chins, and our laughter mingling with the hum of bees and the soft rustling of the wind in the trees. It was a simpler time, and those sun-soaked days still glow in my memory, like a painting by Monet — soft, hazy, and full of life.
As I grew older, my love for cherry tomatoes blossomed into a full-blown obsession. I would daydream in class about the next time I could eat one. My mind…
