Strawberry Fields Forever

The Beatles: Strawberry Fields Forever

The soil is cool between my fingers, damp from the early morning dew. The scent of earth rises in the air, mixing with the faint sweetness of ripening strawberries. A warm breeze rustles through the garden, carrying the quiet hum of spring. I don’t know why I look up just then, but I do—two redbirds perched on the fence, watching. Their feathers catch the sunlight, burning bright against the pale sky. They don’t move, don’t startle. They just sit. And something in me stills.

The song is suddenly there, playing in the back of my mind. Strawberry Fields Forever.

I hear your voice, Dad.

That’s where you’ll find me. Strawberry Fields, Strawberry Fields Forever.

I never really understood what you meant. Maybe I do now.

Strawberries have been somewhat of a quiet thread through my life. My favorite fruit. Jaxon’s too—the only food he’ll ever declare his love for. A few years ago, he wanted to plant them in our garden. The first year, they struggled, beaten down by the Texas heat. We thought they were gone. But then, the next spring, they came back on their own, stronger, sweeter. And now, once again, here they are, growing without effort, like they belong here. Like they were always meant to return.

You would have loved that, Dad!

My dad always had a way with growing things. Mom could make flowers bloom, but he could take a bare patch of dirt and turn it into something that fed people. His garden wasn’t just plants—it was proof of patience, of care. Of knowing when to let nature take its course.

Jamie and I lived in California for a brief period, and even though it wasn’t long, it left its mark on me. There was something dreamlike about it—how the mist rolled over the hills in the early morning, how the sky turned gold in the evenings. We’d take long drives just to soak it all in, past endless stretches of strawberry fields, their rows of red and green blurring together in the afternoon light. Stopping at roadside stands to buy baskets of fruit still warm from the earth. We had a burned mix CD we played in the car, and Strawberry Fields Forever was on it. We listened as we watched the fields blur by, the song drifting through open windows. The air smelled sweet, heavy with the scent of earth and fruit, and sometimes it felt like we had stepped outside of time. We’d dance to old records in the kitchen with the windows open, have fishing adventures in the cool air of the Pacific, and wake up to slow, quiet cool mornings wrapped in the kind of peace that only exists when you know you’re living inside a moment you’ll look back on forever.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons the song stayed with me—not just because of my dad, but because it was woven into so many different corners of my life. The song, the fields, the feeling of things quietly growing all around me. It’s funny how we don’t always recognize the things that will follow us, the ones that will take root in our memories and return when we need them most.

John Lennon wasn’t just a musician to my dad—he was a great thinker and writer, someone who peeled back the layers of the world and put them into words. He used to quote Watching the Wheels, “No longer riding on the merry-go-round I just had to let it go”, like he saw something of himself in it. He thought Lennon was brilliant, deep, someone who didn’t just make music but left something behind in it.

I’ve always felt that, too. He was my favorite Beatle—his music, his words, the way he seemed to search for something bigger. Some of his solo work moves me even more than what he did with The Beatles, maybe because it feels rawer, more exposed. His bed-in movement, the way he and Yoko turned protest into art, into something so simple yet so bold—I’ve always been deeply impacted by that. There was something about the way he lived, the way he created, that makes me keep looking for meaning, for connection, for stars in the dark.

John Lennon wrote Strawberry Fields Forever about a real place, a children’s home near where he grew up. But it wasn’t really about a place at all—it was about memory, about perception, about how reality blurs when you look back at it. The song doesn’t just sound psychedelic—it is psychedelic. The way the instruments bend and shift, the way Lennon’s voice sways between clarity and distortion. It’s a trip through nostalgia that isn’t comforting so much as it is unsettling—memories that don’t sit still, always changing shape the more you examine them.

Maybe that’s why you connected with it so much, Dad. Because your childhood wasn’t just a straight line of memories—it was a mosaic of feelings, of moments, of time spent in the dirt beside Dora.

Some of your best childhood memories were in the garden with Dora. You told me once that was where you felt happiest—digging in the dirt, planting, pulling weeds, playing ball in the yard. That was your sanctuary. The smell of earth, the rhythm of planting, the satisfaction of watching something grow.

And then you grew up. Life got harder. But maybe when you heard Strawberry Fields Forever, it took you back there. Maybe that song, like the dirt under your nails, like the leaves between your fingers, reminded you of something pure.

Eleanor was another reminder of how things grow under the right hands. We picked out the aloe vera cactus together, Dad, Jaxon, and I, walking through the Walmart garden center, scanning the rows of cacti. Dad chose one, took it home, and turned it into something enormous. It even bloomed once, the way only the most cared-for things do. He built a cart for her, wheeled her inside when it got too cold. He broke off her babies, handing them to us like heirlooms.

Jaxon named his Planty, deep in his Pee-Wee’s Playhouse phase. Dad thought it was just too perfect. And just like Dora had taught him to nurture life he set out to do the same with his own grandson.

Maybe that’s why, when you told me that’s where I would find you, I should have believed you.

Dad, I think about what you said all the time. About how I’d find you here.

I’m starting to believe you were right.

Strawberries keep coming back. Even when they shouldn’t, even when I think they’re gone, they find their way home.

And you do too, in ways I never fully understood before.

I hear you in the music, in the rustling of leaves, in the lessons you left behind. I see you in the redbirds, watching over me, over Jaxon and the girls, over the garden we’re growing together.

And I know now. This is what you meant.

Strawberry Fields Forever.

And just like John Lennon left behind a piece of himself in the song, you left a piece of yourself here, too. In the dirt. In the music. In us.

And we will keep searching for you in the places you loved, in the things you taught us to cherish. In the stars. In the fields. In the quiet moments where love remains long after we think it’s gone.