Cheri and the “Mater” Seeds

"Wake up!" the sun seemed to say, as it poked long slender fingers of warm light through Cheri's window.

"No school today, it's Saturday!" Cheri thought, as she pulled the colorful quilt over her head. She felt a soft thump on the bed. "Meow, meow." Toy's black paws made little dents in the quilt, as he walked toward the lump he knew was Cheri's head.

"Oh, no!" thought Cheri. "Toy needs to go outside/" She pulled back the quilt. Her blue eyes looked straight into Toy's green eyes and they both blinked.

"MEOW-OW!" cried Toy.

"Okay, Toy, I'm getting up." Her short little legs slid from under the quilt and ten warm little toes touched the cool floor. "Br-r-r!" Cheri said, as morning air spilled over the rest of her bed-warmed body. "It's a good thing I love you, Toy!"

Cheri quickly pulled her Snoopy sleep shirt off, jumped into her faded jeans and picked up a purple t-shirt with a yellow butterfly on the front. Cheri loved purple almost as much as she loved Toy, her little sister Kimmer, and being in the first grade this year. She slid her feet into some socks she found wadded on the floor.

As she passed her sister's twin bed, Cheri saw a tiny bit of Kimmer's curly yellow hair sticking out from under her quilt.

"Why don't you ever wake Kimmer to let you out, you old Stinker Cat?"

"Meow!" Toy answered her.

Toy followed Cheri to the kitchen door and pushed through the crack when she opened the door for him. He mashed his black nose against the screen door impatiently. Cheri laughed. "Hold your horses!" she said and unlatched the screen door. She helped him push it open enough to squeeze through. In one jump, Toy cleared the stoop and her father's small early tomato plants beside it.

Bright morning sun revealed hidden brown stripes in Toy's silky black fur as he went about his morning business. He quickly disappeared to inspect his territory.

Cheri looked down at her father's tomato plants. She knew his were always the biggest and best tomatoes in the whole neighborhood. He had tomatoes planted as soon as he thought it was warm enough. Cheri's father was the Choir Leader of their church and when he wasn't at church or tinkering with their car, Cheri's father loved to mess with his tomatoes. "Yes," he'd say, "this year's tomatoes will be the very best!" Of course, he said this every year.

Each summer, Cheri liked to pick her father's tomatoes when they were warm from the sun. She would take the red and white saltshaker from the kitchen table and tuck it in a pocket of her shorts. Then she'd look for the brightest red tomato she could find. Picking one she liked, she would rub it up and down on her T-shirt and take a big bite. The juice would squirt out, dribbling down her chin and onto her T-shirt. Then she'd shake salt on it...shake, shake, and bite; shake, shake, and bite again...until the delicious tomato was all gone.

Sometimes when Cheri ate a warm tomato, the little golden seeds would fall onto her T-shirt or shorts and dry there. Later she would flick the dried seeds off as she played in the yard. Sometimes she decorated her mud pies with a few of the dried tomato seeds, placing them like tiny dots of golden icing on the soft squishy mud that she had formed into little pies to bake on a rock.