Do I dare to eat a peach?
May 6, 2008
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There is a layer of dried sugar along my chin. I couldn’t wipe it off while grabbing at zucchini, blueberries and tomatoes, and daring to eat a peach. I forgot to lick the stickiness off until just now. I hadn’t paid when the juice started to dribble–the farmer (the only organic blueberry producer in Texas!) assumed that I soon would, so I greedily stuffed my paper sack and watering mouth with a summer peach. In May. I’ve never seen this kind of produce up North before June. July, even. It felt forbidden, my May 6 peach.
For a long time, I refused peaches entirely. I thought the little hairs of their skin got stuck in my chin like fine needles. I was afraid that I would get a rash from the prickly stubble of their thin, tearable skin. (Downed with light brown.) I plucked nectarines from the grocery bins, and avoided their paler neighbors. Now I realize, that is not it at all. That is not what I meant at all.
It was merely the sugar juice, dried on my chin. Not needles or hairs at all. I wonder when the nectarines come back, will they have the same effect? Will they be half as good as these forbidden peaches, that fell from a tree this morning and made their way into the cup of my palm, to the pit of my pit?
I smelled the bag when I got home. I stuffed my face into the brown paper darkness and inhaled until I was dizzy. It smelled like a wide open summertime field, that little corner on my kitchen counter. And when I emerged from the sack, high as a kite on the scent of July, I really did feel glad to be a Texan. I’ll have an extra month (or two or three!) of these young, juicy things. Before autumn comes and I wonder “will it all have been worthwhile?” falling in love with the fruit of the summer–only to face the white haired waves of winter roll over the dormant fields?
Yes. I will be happy with winter squash in lieu of fiddleheads and zephyrs. I will not have an existential crisis, and picture myself an old man, drowned by human voices. These photos are from today’s farmer’s market, where I fondly remembered a high school English teacher’s love of blueberry picking. She also loves Proofrock and peaches. Here’s to you, Beas.
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