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I had a really high ranking fruit cup at the airport the other day. And I still didn’t finish it. The melon. It’s always the melon. The melon has the problem of never being ripe enough. Granted, honeydew and cantaloupe both have a pretty small sweet spot of perfection, and we all know from experience how beautiful it is to hit that sweet spot. A plum that explodes on your face but is still a bit tart. A pear that your teeth glide through and is left a dripping stem. You can fall in love with an avocado. It’s easy to miss that window. To lose patience and just use it/eat it because it’s “close enough”. Or to forget it’s there for six minutes and the window has slammed shut (thank god for her benevolence in giving us banana bread recipes). I stick my fork in two grapes, side by side (red and green) and popped those suckers with my molars. Flavor profile: ideal Mouth feel: exemplary Vitamins: almost certainly Bonus hydration points: a million I keep going for grapes, occasionally skewering one with a blueberry but never a strawberry. The strawberries go on their own or occasionally with a pineapple. Blueberries same. Above grape/blueberry pairings were accidental events, due to grape fury. Always a few pineapple alone (better be juicy and sting my tongue). Two-thirds down and I start to see the shy corners and colors of the base layer. The structure. If they aren’t ripe enough, they are excellent for structure—the delicate berries above buffered from forming too deep a layer and being crushed by their own collective weight. It is responsible and it is a thought-out idea. There is a logic that can be understood. And it’s understood that compromises must be made. That the fragile and the frail among us must be lifted on our shoulders and conveyed with care and gentleness even if we remain hard because we must remain strong and it is for them and it is truly, genuinely, an honor and a gift to be able to fill that role and provide for that need and we will continue for as long as we can. But the cantaloupe? It could be so good.
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