Sweet Somethings

It’s Gratituesday! Occasionally, I’m paying attention and notice detail in a mundane task that transforms the experience. Today I’m sharing the fun and gratitude of such a moment.

Sweet memories.

Cutting up a bunch of fruit for a salad recently, I sliced into the first cantaloupe of the season and felt a rush of images fill my head. As a child I only knew this fruit with a bit of salt and didn’t appreciate it so much until I was older and enjoyed it unsalted. Every picnic I’d ever gone on, every campout, too, seemed flavored in the memory of this particular smell.

I moved on to a small watermelon and cut into the thick rind releasing the heady summer scent. Even the sound of the rind giving way, the sudden rush of juice on the countertop added to the sweetness of the moment. Then the colors caught the light just so and I reached for my camera.

Mouth fireworks.

The berries, blue, red, black, each held within their compact little packages a burst, a pop, a firework of taste memory. Although I must admit there’s nothing like a berry just picked off the vine and slipped between your lips. Oh, my. Nothing at all. But these store-bought beauties still tingled the senses.

Even the grapes seemed to shine in the kitchen light and bask in the bouquet of other scents mingling in the air.

Sweet-tart!

A squeeze of half a lemon, and another of a quartered lime over the glass bowl of color, memory and anticipation, and my artwork, ahem, I mean, my salad, stood ready for a quick snack.

I’m stunned at the variety of fruit available to me when I walk into the grocery store.

“Incroyable!”

I love the sound of the French word for “incredible.” The very pronunciation of it expresses incredulity, surprise, and appreciation. That’s how I felt making a simple fruit salad.

That’s how I’d like to feel every time I experience the bounty in an American grocery store, the providence of my refrigerator, and the blessings of my own sweet life.

Sweet crunch.

Sweet and sour.

Sweet summertime.

Sweet decadence.

Sweet little somethings.