I remember being a little girl excited and anticipating Summer. Glorious days on the beach, warm nights braaing, cricket and school holidays. On any given day my father would come home with a castle lager box filled with lychees, peaches, nectarines, apricots, grapes. Sweet succulent deliousness. My senses longed to peel a ripe, juicy nectarine. Small fingers carefully removing the thin skin as not to bruise the flesh and so that I could eventually ravish the ripe yielding fruit. Hands wet with juice were thoroughly licked as not to waste this preciousness.
However, as I got older, but not necessarily taller, it seemed as if the old adage that things were better when I was younger rang true. At least when it came to fruit. Perhaps per human erring I was longing for something that could no longer be. The sweet nectarine of my childhood was just that, it seemed - a thing of the past, a fond memory.I can with all honesty say it has been years since I've eaten a truly transportive piece of fruit, until today, that is.
Erik and I strolled to one of the many shops that sell fruit here in Mui Ne, Vietnam, a seaside town teeming with tourists, largely Russian. We got a dragon fruit to share and a passion fruit each. As I slurped the final vestiges of the tart, sour, yellow fruit, I stared into the wrinkled cup from whence it came. For a second I had my nectarine moment something like an innocence long since past. Of Jonty Rhodes making yet another impossible catch, of boerewors with smoertjie and of a blushing Cape Town sunset bleeding into the oncoming night, allowing us for just a few moments to behold their beauty together.
