It is the season of abundant, fresh, fragrant fruit. This morning I cut up a fresh peach in my oatmeal, a peach the color and cost of gold, a peach from the Farmer's Market delivered from the soil to my hand, a peach fragrant and soft without being mushy. You who live in Georgia might not appreciate how hard it is to get a decent peach other places, but it is like with tomatoes. It may look like a peach or tomato, but the first clue is needing an extra sharp knife to cut into it, so there is no risk of breaking a tooth, and then there is the lack of scent or taste.
I read David Masumoto's wonderful book years ago, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on my Family Farm. The farm had been in his family for generations and he is told he will have to destroy his Sun Crest peaches orchard and grow something more popular and transportable. Since I read that book, I have sometimes gone summers without a peach, because I want a true peach, something with give and rivered ripples and the sweet taste of the sun.
I enjoyed my peach this morning.
This morning I sat with why I am so excited about seeing my niece, counting now hours rather than days. I realize I never had time alone with my relatives. We lived far away and so when we gathered, it was a family gathering. My grandmother, who I might have enjoyed quizzing about her career woman life before she married, died when I was 13, about the age we might have begun to have an adult relationship of our own.
Email allows Katy and me connection, but it is not the same as being together and having a week to hang out and explore together. I also know that this time period divides age groups. Can we each step into the life of the other, brew a new mixture of both?
I think there is a hole in my life from the lack of adults, outside my parents, at this age, fourteen. I want to fill something for Katy, but more deeply I want to fill something for myself.
