“What’s your favorite fruit?”
Without needing to think, I answer, “Peaches. “
But peaches are a sometime thing. Some years good, others frustrating. So when they are good, I rejoice all over again.
Sometimes peaches ripen almost before I’m ready. Then I make my favorite compote: skinned, sliced peaches, a slosh of orange juice, and if needed, some confectioner’s sugar, perhaps a squeeze of lemon. Stir and chill. Enjoy at breakfast or on vanilla ice cream.
Many days at lunch, my husband and I share a peach. Once I’ve slurped my half, I squirm away from the table trying to touch nothing, on my way to the sink to wash my slushy hands. For some time after, I sniff peach flesh on my hand. My palms and my fingertips are soft as though I’d lotioned them.
Dealing with globes of ripe fruit, I come upon the flesh beneath the skin—oh, those blushy peach cheeks! Renoir’s brush at work? But then, he’s already decorated every slice, that scarlet fringe revealed when my knife liberates the flesh from the crenelated pit.
Although he wrote of plums, I keep thinking of William Carlos Williams’ poem, This is just to say. It reads as though Williams had written spontaneously on a slip of paper, perhaps left on the counter as an explanation to the cook or housewife who’d prepared the plums.
I think his feelings were much like mine: the joy of finding beloved ripe fruit, its sweetness and utter loveliness.
But I go Williams one better; I hear his voice while partaking of the complex, layered pleasures of handling and preparing peaches.
And I’ve not even mentioned how it feels to hold a soft sueded sphere in your hand when you first pick up a peach . . . the fur, the perfectly tailored suede covering . . .
I’m with you on the love of a delicious ripe peach! Yum!
Isn’t it something?!
I think I took peaches for granted before I read this piece. I never really considered the artistry in the colors or the texture of the peel.
Robin, thank you!
And they are exceptionally sweet when someone drives by a fruit stand and then shares with you.
Helen,
That’s a good friend indeed! how lovely!
Thank you for bringing the beauty of a fresh peach into sharp focus for all of us, your fortunate audience. I am taken back to biting into a warm peach under our family’s peach tree in Sacramento, juice running down my arms, and then filling a basket for mom’s peach pie.
Thank you, Carol, and I realize that this must be perhaps a sad memory as well as a joyous one, as I know that you’ve recently lost your Mom. Sending you much sympathy and love, friend –
Hmmm. As someone who packed peaches for shipping on hot August days to earn money for college, the fruit has a push/pull for me. Still, just the words “peaches and cream” make my mouth water.
Sharon, I wish you’d write a counter-piece to mine from your experience. Obviously, both from what I’ve written here and my background, yours is a very different take from mine. I’d like to read it.
Sharon, that’s my memory also! Where did you pack peaches? My college “peach of a job” was in Yakima, Washington.
I have such squirrelly issues with texture that peaches have no appeal until the skin is removed.Until then we are not friends.
I’m minutes from the Washington state border so cherries are my favorite summer fruit right now. I was at my sons house relaxing and eating cherries right from his tree.
Donna, I’m with you on the cherries, really – until I came to California, I never ever had enough of them!