I am not a fan of watermelon for the most part. It tastes bland, and the texture is like a hybrid of sponge and necco wafer. I feel like I’m eating a sand scuptor  of fruit. I realize I’m in the minority on this. Less than thirty miles from me they usually celebrate an annual “Watermelon Thump” and seed spitting contest. I understand that over time, watermelons have gotten sweeter and less seedy, so maybe they’re worth giving another chance, but I’ve got other priorities in my life. If it happens it happens. 

I have only wanted MORE watermelon one time in my life. On one of the last days of Outward Bound, we did a ten-plus mile run up and down the gravel-dusty roads near the base-camp. After a month of hiking 30-50 pound packs up mountains, our fitness really was transformed, and a two or three hour run, once unthinkable, was now merely horrible. Before we started, one instructor challenged us to “keep jogging” not walk up the inclines, as a test of mental strength, but I walked up almost every hill. Improved fitness or not, willingly submitting myself to unnecessary struggle wasn’t something I appreciated at that age. It came with time, though.

At the finish of the run, by far the farthest run of my then twenty years, the sweat, dust, grit, and heat had turned me into a dry-loofah version of myself. Water was appreciated. Banana necessary. The watermelon was rapturous! I suddenly understood why people raved about watermelon. Each easy chomp was rewarded with enough water to make the desert flowers inside my mouth bloom, and washed rivulets of dust off my face and neck. I stood under the hot sun by the side of that dusty road, and worshiped at the pick-up truck bed altar to the watermelon-god. I don’t remember how many slices I ate, but it probably exceeds the number I’ve had in the thirty subsequent years.

I’m thinking about the times when I was a bony kneed little boy, just stepping out of a bathtub during a cold New York season. The times in my life when a bath towel could completely wrap my frame while I scrunched myself into a ball, with towel under my feet and bottom and wrapped taut to my chin. That tight little tent could contain within its terrycloth walls all the heat that one little heart could make, and the goosebumps would slowly erase themselves from my skin. While I revel in memories of safety, I am lamenting all the people in the world who do not have, and have never known, such protection.

The first bite of pepperoni pizza after two and a half years was sublime. The nerves in my tongue were so unused to the meaty umami flavor that my eyes watered as much as my mouth did. It wasn’t even a quality pizza; it was some industrial kitchen Sysco slice, but it was amazing!

I became a vegetarian in the late-Fall of 1990. Jenn Goetz and I decided that the moral and environmental ethics of eating meat were too huge to ignore, and we supported each other through the initial transition struggles. This was rapidly tested since the two of us had already signed up to cook and host the annual Thanksgiving dinner at the Newman House (Catholic Student Center). The first bird I cooked was the first bird I didn’t get to eat. I’m sure there was a period of difficulty, but I don’t really remember them. I do remember learning to cook vegetarian lasagna from the Moosewood Cookbook. 

I was a content vegetarian for the next few years until I took the job at the outdoor learning center in Maryland. We weren’t well paid, but they had a cook, which mean I lost control of my own menu. If this guy had been a decent cook it might have been okay, but this dude was NOT a good cook. Imagine the burger chef from “You Can’t Do That on Television” who always got cigarette ash in burgers, and you’ve got it. It was like eating slime, especially since we few vegetarians lived off of the side dishes. And peanut butter. My will slowly crumbled.

Additionally, my moral relationship to the meat was changing. Part of the place was a working farm, and we helped care for and feed the pigs, sheep, and cattle. Much of the meat served was from those animals (or the relatives of those first animals I fed, I suppose). The anonymous industriality of the meat was reduced to the more direct “I feed you – You feed me” except I was the broken link. I actually came to feel I was missing out on something meaningful. I don’t know if I agree with past Kevin on that, but I still feel comfortable with his choice as appropriate to that moment in his life.

For better or worse, that slice of pepperoni was the first step back to joining the mainstream of American society. I can take it or leave meat. I’m lazy enough that I won’t go out of my way to avoid meat, and in semi-rural Texas, it’s easier to eat it than not. 

Year later, Michele and I went to Chicago to meet Marsha‘s Brian for the first time, and we all went to Gibson’s steakhouse. Honestly most beef tastes the same to me: I like a good hamburger as much as good brisket as much as a good steak.  It’s all fine. A “great” steak is wasted on me, the way great wine or great jazz is. I believe you think there’s a difference, but I can’t sense it.  Michele, on the other hand, is a connoisseur of beef. She makes faces and noises while eating steak…I will just let that sentence trail off…suggestively.

So while Marsha and Kevin did their “haven’t talked in X number of years” routine, the introverts Brian and Michele worshiped at the temple of quality meat. Late in dinner, and mid conversation, Michele literally interrupted whatever I was saying to Marsha to ask “are you gonna finish that?“ then proceeded to fork stab what was on my plate onto her plate and kept going. It was glorious! A defining moment of charm in our relationship and probably still the most assertive thing I have ever seen her do.

There is a moment I can see and replay from college from outside my own eyes. I see it as from a movie; the view is as surely of the two of us walking towards each other through the space, as it is her walking towards me from my own eye. This is how I know it’s not a true memory, but a composite fold into my neurons from “reliving” it over and over again. 

We’d broken up after Thanksgiving, Junior year, and steered clear of each other afterwards. We’d had very little in common, except our passion, so it was rare for our paths to cross. Either during finals, when the campus was thinning out, or early the next semester, when new class schedules bred new routes and new collisions I saw her again for the first time. 

The plaza between the Engineering Building and the side of the library was off the beaten path, and bounded a triangle, which pinched people inward despite being a decent size. The building walls made an empty brick canyon, and I saw her about the same time she saw me. My legs got weak and heart pounded as we stopped a few feet away and chatted like being four feet apart wasn’t a distance measurable in pain or confusion. It was polite. We caught up about nothing. It was fine, which was a step up from the choking throat the last time I’d seen her. I can watch us walking away after a minute, going on with whatever else happened that day. I have no idea. The memory of that day is that instant overexposed; burning out any image of the rest.

The camera of my mind is obviously a lie, but it was probably also a mental tool. I wonder if I didn’t dissociate in that moment to distance myself from the emotion of reckoning with, and reconciliation with, the tumult of a breakup that had left me raw and confused. After weeks of not confronting my failure, here it came walking towards me across the quad, so I experienced it partially as a spectator to myself. 

One painfully cheesy but absolutely truthful and accurate recollection is that as I walked away, the song “Separate Lives” by Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin began playing in my head. 

I will close by quoting my favorite author, again reminding myself that I am only one part of any story. 

“She did not live her life to be a memory for me, or anyone, but she is. Some people mark you as they go by.”

Guy Gavriel Kay in A Brightness Long Ago

That moment just as your mountain bike tires hit the dirt from a poorly performed surprise trail jump in which your feet flew from the pedals and your ass plomped onto the pointy part of the seat so hard the metal post snapped off and you’re still descending towards the bike’s crossbar and your grip on the handlebars is poor enough that have to choose between using your legs to save your balls or “steer” away from the tree.

I don’t remember Dave’s last name, but he was the captain of a men’s summer soccer club I played with for a couple years in college.  Jim’s high-school buddy and teammate Howard Kogan connected me with the team, but I don’t think he was playing the game I’m thinking of. Dave was a canny central defender/sweeper.  Dave was thirty, which seemed ancient, with a Tom Selleck mustache. He was an easy going guy before and during games. He played smart, which I liked, to make up for being a little bit older. I was in my usual spot as left defender/fullback. 

One night we were playing a team who’s center forward was a local star, nineteen like me, but built like a small truck. He’d just come off a season at a Division I school, maybe. He was fast, powerful, cocky with success. Dave had spent much of the game matching brain against brawn, keeping Tom (or whatever his name was) in check.  Late in the game, the striker and Dave chased a long pass heading towards our goal. They were racing side by side on the breakaway, Dave a head taller, and Todd (or whatever his name was) like a bull chasing him down a street of Pamplona cobblestone. Dave got his foot planted in front of the ball to stop the run. Tim, or whatever his name was, had a foot pushing behind the ball, and just leaned into him with his shoulder.  Not like a football tackle, more like this moment of pause-tension in a tug of war or arm-wrestling match. There was an instant of complete stillness, and then, Dave’s leg just…snapped. 

I was chasing them down the field anyway, and I’ll never forget the gunshot sound of his leg breaking, muffled and held in place by the padding of his shin guards. That wasn’t as disturbing as the low, sad-cow moan Dave let out as he fell and laid there. To his credit, Tig, or whatever his name was, was as gracious and concerned and helpful as anyone else was, while we waited for the ambulance to arrive and drive onto the field, to gurney Dave away.

There are few pleasures better than a forkful of blueberry pancake. The crisp brown pattern on the surface. The juicy-hot delight of a blueberry, large enough to show through both sides, as it pops on my tongue. The crush and crunch of brown sugar, dissolving in the butter; dissolving my teeth. The sweet freedom of a bowl of brown sugar in the center of the table. 

My godmother and her children are over for a summer day in our pool, suddenly cut short by an unpredicted thunderstorm. Not a rough, scary, blow, but a distant, steady flash and peel above the low, gray clouds, which will keep us indoors for the afternoon. Later there will be Monopoly, but now there are pancakes by the platter. My mother must have been planning to feed an army, as my godparents have an “old-timey Catholic” sized crew more suited for baseball than basketball. Most of them are younger than me, however, with shorter arms, and smaller bellies. My mother is a generous hostess, and it’s still the nineteen-seventies, and the blueberries are in season. She keeps cooking, and on this day, I will attempt to eat my body weight in blueberry pancakes. I make no claim to an exact memory of this day, but I am certain that I ate a double digit number of pancakes, and that first digit might not have been a one. 

I can not eat a blueberry pancake at a restaurant; I have been ruined by my mother’s and her mother’s work. I had a plate of mulberry pancakes outside of Glacier National Park that was delicious, but it was also after three days in the backcountry, and hunger is the best spice. Noone else ever came close, and I’ve stopped kicking at that football. I’ll feast upon the memory of pancakes, and eat my hunger. 

PS – People who put syrup on blueberry pancakes are monsters. 

PPS – This is not my most cherished fruit-based story.

In my childhood bedroom, at the foot of my bed, there was a low bookshelf. The top of the bookshelf was where I kept coin-can, my trophies, and my two round rocks.

Both rocks were about the size of a big orange, or a softball (are those the same size?). The one my grandfather found one day when I was six or seven, was almost perfectly round, and dark gray. It was kind of a lucky charm to me, although I don’t know why. I think it was just because it was so close to perfect. It was so smooth and symmetrical that it was probably a piece of natural clay that somebody shaped into a ball and then abandoned, only to be found days, months, decades later. The other one was light brown in color, rougher in texture, and more oblong. I found that one myself out on a walk with my mom, but I don’t recall where. The two were so well paired that that made a nice set of bookends for years. 

I’m not sure where the dark gray one ended up, but the light brown one I still sits on the shelf near my desk tonight.

I’m interested if any of you want to share childhood possessions that have made it this far with you in comments.

We were more than a day late getting home from our honeymoon, because of the joys of air travel, involving a dust storm in Phoenix, a temperature of 100 degrees at midnight, and the only time in my life flying first class. The travel was what we used to call “an ordeal” before the world descended into a COVID-fueled hellscape.

While we were away, friends Greg, Carolyn, Beth, Scott, and Jarrett came by and “decorated“ our apartment for when we got home. They did some wonderful things. They used the last of the helium and balloons. There were balloons everywhere. They even filled the washer and dryer with balloons, which was cool. They hid these lovely little fortune-cookie-sized notes in every drawer, nook, cranny and book in the place. I was still finding those little notes, 15 years later, saying “You may now kiss the bride”. I’m pretty sure the books still have some waiting to be found. It was lovely.

Unfortunately, they also put confetti all over the ceiling fan in our bedroom, which was not. Objectively, it was a pretty cool idea/prank. However, we got home near midnight after two exhausting days of travel, and I literally just wanted to fall into my bed. I turned on the ceiling fan and paper rained from the sky. I grumbled, slapped the fan control off, and we cleaned up the bedspread. After that mess, we folded down the bedcovers, undressed, and turned the ceiling fan back on, whereupon the rest of the confetti fell into my bed, and stuck to my sweaty body. I lost my shit. I went full-Hulk.I literally threw the queen mattress off it’s frame. I cursed my friends’ names, and only didn’t call them because it was so late. I was so furious with them, that even the next morning, at church, I was mad at Greg Hale’s joyous, congratulatory face. Poor guy. Such good friends caught so much wrath for such a lovely gift. 

Do you remember refrigerator magnet poetry kits? I think it was Jarrett who spent his time composing a message for when we returned. It has been a fixture in our kitchen for 21 years. It’s been moved from place to place and fridge to fridge and it’s on my refrigerator door now: 

 friend s leave

a thousand gift s

after you go away

they must love you still

1. I proposed the day AFTER Valentine’s Day – because that holiday is bullshit.
2. It was during a rerun of Friends. Michele was very confused at first.
3. The day before the wedding we tried to clean birds nests from the lights of the pavilion at Chinquapin – who graciously hosted the reception.
4. Sister Kitty gave instructions to my brother on how to march ceremoniously.
5. Our rehearsal dinner was fajitas at Ninfas.
6. We went to Dave & Busters for our “bachelor/ette party”, but Michele had to leave early because her sister got a flat tire coming into town. 
7. I had some butterflies in my stomach during breakfast with my parents on my wedding day.
8. The Rice/TMC Catholic Student Center chapel was adorned with flowers done by Jarrett.
9. Marsha and Jarrett composed a song for our wedding.
10. My family cried during the remembrance of my grandmother, who had died the previous year.
11. The moment I slid the ring onto Michele’s finger.
12. Everyone changed into casual clothes for the reception, since it was outdoors.
13. We served BBQ brisket.
14. We had a margarita machine.
15. We had spray-mister bottles as centerpieces. The one rule was don’t squirt water on Michele.
16. It was hot enough that one guest got heat exhaustion.
17. Marsha and Jarrett spent part of the night surgically removing gnats from the wedding cake frosting.
18. My best man, Bill Church, made the toast. We’ve lost touch, for no good reason.
19. Our first dance was to “Weightless” by Ellis Paul.
20. We had a dollar-dance with the bride.
21. My favorite picture in the world is of Michele with wedding flowers in her hair, a squirt bottle in her hand, and mischief in her eyes.