That gooseberry kid

At a grocery store in a nearby town, a bright-eyed young man named Rafael works in the produce department. Each morning as he stocks the fruit and carefully arranges the displays, his eyes drift to the squat boxes of berries lined up and neatly stacked. He reads off the labels and quietly mouths the words, one by one: “Strawberries. Blackberries. Blueberries. Raspberries.”

He thinks back to his childhood and time spent climbing trees and walls, when he’d reach over into his neighbor’s yard and pick berries right off the tree. He can feel his mouth starting to pucker up and the tartness as his taste buds recall the flavor of his favorite gooseberries. Gooseberries.

“Hey boss,” he yells across the aisle to the produce manager, “when are we going to get some gooseberries in here?”
“Gooseberries? What’s that?”
“You know! Gooseberries. Little, round, sour…”
It’s hard to describe gooseberries to someone who hasn’t tasted them before.

A week later, Rafael is at the farmer’s market when he sees Sarah who runs a little farm stand. Incredibly, there at the front of her stand, are little boxes of gooseberries. Not pumpkin-shaped like he remembers, but smooth and round. He picks up one and tastes it. He has to close his eyes and savor it as he remembers the joy of eating so many gooseberries all those summers ago. He buys some and takes them home to enjoy.

The next day, he shows off the berries at work. “Hey boss, try one.”
“Hey boss, when are we going to get some gooseberries in here?”
The other employees tease him and after a while he gets known around the store as “that gooseberry kid.”

Meanwhile, up at the corporate offices that run the grocery store, executives have started to think about how to bring locally sourced products into their stores. After analyzing numbers and charts and thick stacks of documents, they eventually direct store managers to carry local produce. At Rafael’s store, the store manager is reviewing a list of products she’s been sent.

“What do you think?” she says, showing the produce manager the list.
“I think we’d better bring in that gooseberry kid.”

Originally published at https://www.tumblr.com on November 21, 2015.