Zucchini Relish Champ

My life is complete. I won a blue ribbon, FIRST PLACE, at the Redwood Empire County Fair for my zucchini relish! I had meant to enter my zucchini relish in the Fair for years and finally went for it last summer. The Fair took place in August. I forgot all about it because we had a death in our close circle of friends the week of the Fair. Much later, when I remembered the Fair, I was bitterly disappointed to realize that my zucchini relish had not won. I figured it was because I don’t use as much salt or sugar as those 4Hers with whom I was competing. But as it turns out, my zucchini relish is NUMBER ONE! I got a notice in the mail yesterday, with a check for a whopping $3 prize money, and my blue ribbon. The grand prize. There’s no living with me now. I’m going to frame that check and my blue ribbon. My friend Jessica says I am making a major contribution by thinking of more things to do with zucchini. (She’s a gardener, she knows what’s at stake. Get it? “Stake”?) When I called my friend Linda to boast I said, “you’ll never believe what I won,” and she thought it was the Pulitzer Prize. “No, better,” I told her. “A blue ribbon.” She thinks I should enter my pesto next year. When I told my friend Candy, she told me to enter my cactus mango salad next year. The possibilities are endless. I’m on my way. As Virginia Woolf wrote in To the Lighthouse, “If it were now to die it were now to be most happy.” I have made my contribution. I make the best zucchini relish in the county. I was judged and came up number one. There’s a lesson here. In the bright and shining summer I thought I hadn’t won, but months later, in the dark of winter, I discovered that in fact I won after all. Sometimes, when we think we’ve lost, it turns out we’ve won. Just sometimes. But one can always hope.