For over 30 years of my life, summer meant one thing: the beach. That all came to an end when my mom died in 2012 of stage 4 gall bladder cancer. F CANCER. Sure, I could have continued to go without her, but then I lost my sight five months after she passed, nothing was the same nor as it should be. I did not draw a hard line in the sand, nor did I make a declaration that there would be no more shore days in my future, it happened over time. My life rearranged, partly my own doing but organically as well. Holes that had been created by the loss of mom and my vision were filled in by other things, plugging the breech before the SS Sister Rain went down. We are incredibly resilient creatures. We shift, we adapt.
I am no longer a fan of the months that follow spring. Once June rolls around, I check the calendar often to see how many more weeks until Labor Day. I hate the heat, my summer sister is gone.
The one feature of July and August that does bring me immense joy is fresh fruit. We frequent a local farm stand for watermelon, cantaloupe, corn and my favorite: peaches. My husband has the phone number of the owner of the produce cart, she texts him when each wave of bushels arrive. She so very kindly sets some aside for us, keeping them in her house across the field from the farm stand until he can get there to pick them up. I love nothing more than standing over the sink, biting into the perfectly ripened, sweet deliciousness, allowing the juice to run down my chin and into the drain below me. This has got to be what heaven tastes like.
In the winter ,when we pass the empty lot where the produce cart sits in the warm weather months, I say, “Peaches???” Mister Rain, in turn, replies, “No, Sister Rain.” He thinks it is a running joke, that I am kidding. I am not.
Piper went for a car ride with his daddy on this day to pick up mommy’s stash. Piper adopted us two months after my mom left this earth, three months before I woke up blind. Piper and peaches. There are always new things to love.
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