Why Standing Under a Cherry Tree at My Age Felt Like One of the Most Magical Moments of My Life By Mae
There are experiences that arrive late in life and surprise you completely with how much they mean. Not because they are complicated or grand or difficult to achieve, but precisely because they are simple, and because something simple that you have never experienced before carries a sweetness that is entirely its own. Standing under a cherry tree at Felderland Farm on a sunny summer day, reaching up to pick fruit with my own hands for the very first time at my age, was that kind of experience. And I will not forget it for as long as I live.
I had never seen a cherry tree up close before that day. I had eaten cherries, of course, had seen them in shops and markets, had known them as a fruit without ever knowing them as something growing on a branch in the open air, waiting to be found and picked by whoever came looking. But there it was, the tree standing generous and full in the sunshine, clusters of cherries hanging deep and dark and perfect among the leaves, and I reached up and took one and the whole moment felt quietly magical in a way that is difficult to explain to someone who has not experienced a first like that late in life.
At my age, firsts become rarer. The world has already shown you so much of itself that new experiences require seeking out rather than stumbling upon. But on that day at Felderland Farm, the Voice of Domestic Workers gave me something genuinely new, a first that arrived not in childhood or youth but in the middle of a life already full of experience and sacrifice and quiet endurance. And perhaps that is exactly why it meant so much. Because I have earned the right to be surprised by joy. I have worked long enough and given enough and waited long enough for a moment that belonged entirely and simply to me.
The strawberries were there too, lower to the ground and just as generous, red and warm from the sun and tasting the way strawberries only taste when they are eaten at the place and moment they were grown. I picked them and ate them and felt something loosening inside me that I had not fully realised was held tight. The loosening of a person who has been responsible and serious and hardworking for a very long time finally being given permission, if only for an afternoon, to simply enjoy something without it costing anything except her presence.
All around me were friends and fellow VODW members, and the happiness in that field was collective and real. There is a particular quality to joy that is shared among people who understand each other's struggles, who have walked similar roads and carried similar weights and arrived at this sunny farm on this particular afternoon having earned every minute of the rest and the laughter it offered. We took photographs and called to each other between the rows and filled our baskets and our hearts with equal enthusiasm, and the day felt like a gift given by the whole world at once.
That gift, of time that belongs to you, of joy that costs nothing but your presence, is one that domestic workers deserve far more regularly than most of us receive it. The right to change employer without restriction is part of ensuring that domestic workers are not so consumed by unjust working conditions that days like this one become impossible to reach. A worker who is trapped, who cannot leave a harmful situation without losing her legal standing, cannot fully rest even in a cherry orchard on a summer afternoon. The freedom to choose where you work is also the freedom to truly rest when rest is offered.
I am so thankful for this opportunity. Those words come from somewhere deep and genuine, because the thankfulness is not only for the fruit picking itself but for what it represents. It represents a community that believes its members deserve beautiful experiences. That believes domestic workers should not only work and endure but also play and rest and stand under cherry trees in the sunshine and feel, however briefly, that the world is generous and good. The right to renew the Overseas Domestic Worker Visa is what allows that community to keep offering those experiences to its members over time, what ensures that the connections built and the memories made are not constantly being interrupted by the forced departures of workers whose visas have run out before their lives here were finished.
At my age, to have this experience for the first time, to discover that there are still firsts waiting, still moments of genuine wonder available to a person who has lived and worked and sacrificed as much as I have, is a reminder that life is not finished offering its gifts. The right to settlement is the legal expression of that belief. It says that a domestic worker who has come this far, who has given this much and is still here and still growing and still capable of finding magic in a cherry tree on a summer afternoon, deserves to stay. Deserves to keep discovering. Deserves a future here that is as full and as sweet as the fruit she picked that day.
And the right to British citizenship is the horizon that makes all of it complete. It is the country saying, finally and fully, that the woman standing in that orchard belongs here. Not temporarily. Not conditionally. But permanently and with every right and recognition that belonging deserves. She has earned her place under that cherry tree and under this sky, and it is time for the law to say so clearly.
I am so thankful. For the cherries and the strawberries and the sunshine and the friends beside me and the organisation that made it all possible. For the reminder, at my age, that life still has magic in it if you are willing to reach for it. And I am still reaching.
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