Peaches

Daisy did not know much about oceanic sciences, but if asked, she would describe her mind as something like a coral reef and her thoughts like sea urchins. She often found herself wading through waters she could not hurry through, softly scaring the urchins away with her quiet movements. The older she got, the harder it was for those thoughts to stay present long enough to get a good look.

The question popped into her mind so quickly it startled her in the grocery store:

What is it called when something matters so much that everything ceases to matter at all?

She stood there gently swaying in the tide of her mind, trying to find what brought that question to her. She was almost afraid to move or breathe for fear of losing the flash that crossed her vision when beside her came the “You done here?” from the little old woman at her elbow.

“Sorry, yes,” she whispered. She envisioned herself treading the warm water, looking into the depths for that something bright she used to know so well, the familiarity that had pressed the question into the palm of her hand with urgency.

It was a memory, she thought to herself as she moved away from the stand. If it was a memory, that meant it lived somewhere within her and maybe she could find it when she went home. Desperate to preserve the sensation, she almost blindly left the grocery store and stepped out into the oppressive heat of midsummer.

It had been weeks of heat pressing down on everyone, the hottest summer she could remember. Everywhere she went she was reminded the sun was a flaming ball of fire and she felt it almost personally when everywhere she looked she was accosted by light and heat off of the pavement, the windows, the car fenders, the people. She could almost not wait to get home from the sidewalk when she halted.

What is it called when you escape the confinement of appropriateness?

There it was again. The hair on her head was absorbing the heat, sweat dripped down her neck, the sun glared in her eyes demanding answers for her existence, “Excuse me,” from behind her as a young man stomped up the walkway with an equally demanding glare mismatched with his verbal passport to politeness.

She gripped the grocery bags heavy against her fingers. “Sorry,” she murmured, unable to make a greater sound. The heat enveloped her like an embrace she did not want to let go of lest she lose that memory. She had to remember what it was. Something deep within her longed to remember.

Bursting into the little apartment, Daisy blindly locked the front door and dumped her grocery bags on the counter. The familiar walk back home had been a practically blind one as she focused hard on finding the memory in the distortion of the ripples and waves. Her desperation bade her move quickly to find it, but she knew all too well the environment of her mind. Move fast and the little sea urchins will retreat within themselves and never be reachable again.

She sat down at her kitchen table, the sun illuminating the small space. She placed her hands on the tabletop, closed her eyes, and drew a long breath into her body. She could feel the searching deep within her, as if hidden by a kelp forest. She was floating above it, but the memory was hidden. She needed to sink into the dark to bring it to the surface.

“It’s the beach,” she thought to herself, focusing on the heat that had jogged her memory.

She quickly rose from the table and, against her better judgment, opened the sliding glass door. The heat of the day was like a thick wall, practically solid enough to rest her forehead against. Almost as soon as she felt the warmth on her face, she could smell the saltwater.

You do not feel wet when you are in the ocean.

She contemplated this thought often, in all sorts of contexts. Before showering, she does not want to get wet. After showering, she does not want to feel wet anymore. But while showering, she does not feel wet at all. Beneath the warm stream washing the day away, she feels comfortable. At her most soaked, her sensation is not that of wetness.

Another example is dirt. Before gardening, she does not want to get her hands dirty. After gardening, she cannot wait to wash her hands of the dirt. But while gardening, hands deep in a pot of soil, when she needs to clean up the most, she does not feel dirty at all.

These thoughts were old thoughts, thoughts she had pondered at a beach long ago, when for a brief moment she had been willing to sacrifice cleanliness and order for wet sand caked onto her toes and salt water softly matting her hair. She lost the sensation of getting wet once fully submerged in the water but became averse to feeling cold when out of it. She gritted her teeth before going in but was then loathe to leave.

And how much more so when joined by your lover holding you in the tide?

She closed her eyes, seated on the floor at the open sliding glass door, legs crossed beneath her. The memory was coming into view now, she could almost taste the salty air and hear the laughter over her shoulder. She had not been alone that day.

Two lovers race across the beach, enthralled with one another. They brace themselves for the cold water, splashing each other as if playing with discomfort were a love language. They wade out further until they are not tall enough to touch down on the sand, forcing them to catch onto one another. Arms and legs are entwined, and they unknowingly commence a dance against gravity.

Here in the arms of the ocean, their kisses become sloppy in their hunger for each other. They have lost the sensation of being wet and so only know their ravenous lips sucking and pursuing each other. Saliva and salt water are essentially the same. Who cares if their faces are wet? It no longer matters. They are free from the self-consciousness of exchanging intimacy and whether you are neat about it. Here there are only lips and tongues and sloshing ocean…

…and hungry bellies.

Her eyes flew open. As she stood from her place at the door and walked into the kitchen to find her groceries, she remembered having pushed the boy away with a smirk and racing him back to the beach. Hardly a word had been said between them, but they had the same thought as they ran like mad across the sand, beautiful as young deer in springtime.

She laughed to herself as she searched through the bags, remembering their feet caked in sand and their hair wild with saltwater. These things did not hinder them, however. They were careless as they had raced to the umbrella and their belongings.

It was not carelessness.

“Careless is the wrong word,” she said to herself softly, hand paused on her prize as she thought hard about the memory. “What were we, if not careless…”

She withdrew from the groceries a small sack of four peaches, just as she had done on that sweltering summer beach day. The breeze through the sliding glass door smelled of the crepe myrtles and freshly mown grass just outside, but she focused on the smell of the fresh peaches that called her back to the old, familiar relief of the umbrella against the bright sun, the taste of saltwater dripping down their faces, the sight of their wet hair no longer neatly arranged. They had not cared.

But we did care.

She frowned at the wrongness of “carelessness” ascribed to the memory. Something about the word was striking a chord within her that did not fit what she knew to be true. With peaches in hand, she sat down at the table and concentrated on them, as if hoping they would share the secret of her youth.

She relaxed into the memory of fishing the peaches out of the basket. Even after all these years, something about that first bite stuck vividly with her. There on the beach, beneath the umbrella, dripping in ocean, she remembered biting into the peach, piercing its soft skin and feeling its soft pink juice running down her chin and fingers. They each laughed in amazement at how fresh the fruit was, how they somehow became more soaked. They finished enjoying the meat around the stones, growing messier as ocean and peach juice mingled on their faces and hands and forearms.

Yet our cares were free of self-consciousness.

The shared experience of perfect, weightless belonging in the ocean had somehow followed them under the umbrella where there could be no shame in making a mess with a peach. And just as the water had brought kisses without concern for neatness, before sensibilities could return, the boy leaned in and kissed her chin, tasting the peach and the ocean and her warm skin. Free of self-consciousness, they looked for hints of sweetness on each other’s fingers and faces, exploring a delicate intimacy susceptible to breaking at words as simple and confining as “clean.”

Sitting at the kitchen table, her hair soft in the hot summer breeze, Daisy held the peach in her hand. “We could be unthinking children, merely tasting each other’s sweet and salt while being young people ever so madly in love.”

She began putting away the groceries, but her mind was still there, 53 years ago, on a beach with a lover, retracing each detail in slow motion.

What is it called when you escape the confinement of appropriateness?

The memory used to bring up feelings of embarrassment when recalling how he observed her mess and kissed it away.

What is it called when something matters so much that everything ceases to matter at all?

But in the moment, before there was a future from which to reflect, she felt comfort beyond the scope of her skin.

You do not feel wet when you are in the ocean.

“We were carefree,” she smiles softly. “Carefree as peaches.”