Thank you for the care package, Miss Paula. Thank you for the cute basket of homemade jams with handwritten labels. Do you know how long it’s been since I had mayhaw jelly? A long time.

But most importantly, thank you for the tomatoes.

Tomatoes are my favorite “non-vegetable” vegetable. I was recently informed by a smart person that tomatoes are—technically—a “fruit” because they are the ripened “ovary” of a flowering plant. But that’s just weird. I would never eat ovaries. Moreover, I certainly wouldn’t eat ovaries on ice cream, and everyone knows you only eat fruit on ice cream. So the tomato is a vegetable. Case closed.

Nevertheless, these weren’t just ANY tomatoes you sent. These were Slocomb, Alabama, tomatoes. From the tomato capital of our state. A town where the high-school marching band is nicknamed the “Redtops” and wears bright uniforms that look vaguely like tomatoes.

I was in a parade once with the Redtops. I was riding in a Cadillac, waving to onlookers. The band marched directly behind me, playing “Word Up!” originally recorded by American funk band Cameo (1986).

“Word Up!” was a pretty good song in 1986, and it’s still a good song. But this was apparently the only song the Redtops knew. By the 1,498th rendition our driver was contemplating driving off a bridge.

So God bless you, Miss Paula. You cannot know what these small-town tomatoes do to me. Namely, because a tomato is not just a tomato.

For starters, a tomato contains traces of soil from the hometown where it was grown. This means that—in a way—when you eat a Slocomb tomato, you are tasting Pleasant Hill Baptist Church, the farm supply store, pep rallies, civic meetings, fifth-Sunday sings, and the Miss Tomato Queen pageant.

The tomato is also the taste of rainwater. The same rains Slocomb farmers so diligently prayed for; the same rains the high-school baseball team so fervently prayed against.

A tomato is also the taste of dogged determination. The kind that built this country. Do you know how hard it is to be a farmer? It’s tough, if not impossible. Especially in today’s modern America.

But they still farm in Slocomb. Farmers still plow. They still sow. They still reap. They still wake up with the chickens. And they still go to bed long before your party has even begun.

Farmers still work tirelessly. They still tenderize miles of soil. They still spend weeks scrupulously testing for pH levels, soil acidity, fungal dangers, and drainage problems. They still shell out small fortunes to maintain battalions of heavy machinery.

The farmer is not unlike a parent. The farmer cares for each tomato plant like an infant, nourishing them, protecting them from predators, from insects, from drought, from rot, from blight, from cankers, from heat, from natural disasters, from disease.

At each point in this laborious affair, all the farmer can do is trust in an unseen hand. His whole livelihood is a gamble.

But if the farmer has been vigilant; if everything goes well; if the farmer has prayed hard enough; if Providence is on the farmer’s side; if the farmer is patient enough to trust the process; you get a tomato.

Thus, each ripe fruit represents the humble journey of belief. Of faith. It represents the farmer’s defiant optimism, his long hours of hard work, his months of prayer. His joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, integrity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

And what are these attributes if not incarnations of love? Which is what you have given me, dear Paula. You have given me love.

I hope you find the same affection within these feebly written words.

Earnestly,

—Sean Dietrich