Mother’s Day is next week. This makes me sad, and furious, because I do not want to be sad about a holiday designed to get me to purchase flowers and cards. But alas, I am human, and thinking of the first Mother’s Day without her makes me cry.
Damnit.
So I am going to write about the food she loved in summer, and she loved these things best.
First, cantaloupe. She taught me how to choose a ripe cantaloupe, and I am most grateful. There is nothing as disappointing as a melon which is unripe and tasteless.
At the end of the cantaloupe, there’s a little round spot where it was cut off the vine. Press it. It should give a little. Smell it. If it smells strongly of sweetness, buy it. It’s ripe. If you can’t smell anything, it’s not ripe.
She and Tammy visited me once in July, with the newly arrived Ella, who was about a year old. This was before the GPS. They got lost in my neighborhood, which is easy to do, so I stepped out of my house to kind of wave them in.
I smelled the cantaloupe before I saw their car. My mom brought me several from Virginia and they were in the trunk. I can’t smell one without thinking of her.