Sunshine After Snow

Planning a wedding for the end of April in Michigan means accepting that the weather cannot be slid into a pocket of a shiny wedding planner or checked off a to-do list, like “find romantic smoky-eye photo” and “pay eight trillion wedding vendors”.

Marrying my best friend and the love of my life made it easy to laugh at the snow covering the ground as our plane took off, as did the knowledge that the beaches of Hawaii were waiting patiently at the end of a long flight, with a few day’s stop in southern California, land of beautiful weather.

My first Hawaiian cocktail: a pina colada, sticky sweet and icy and garnished with a little umbrella and a slice of Hawaiian pineapple. Relaxed and content and surrounded by sand, I sipped from the coconut-infused rum, cool sweat from the glass dripping welcome relief from my warm hand to my (still basically lily white) legs.

I slid the garnish from the glass without thinking, nibbling at the edge of the pineapple.

Sunshine flooded my mouth, dancing across my tongue and leaving a trail of nectar on my lips.

I forgot that the pineapple slice was only the drink’s garnish, an afterthought grabbed by the bartender from a black, plastic nest of similar slices. I devoured the rest of the fruit, ignoring the sticky juice on my fingers, the napkin that came with my drink long-forgotten on a table somewhere.

I’d eaten pineapple before, appreciated the sweetness of the fruit, the slight tartness, the juice seeming to be held together by tender threads of flesh.

This pineapple was different, eaten from the edge of a glass, my new wedding ring a pleasant, unfamiliar weight on my hand. The fruit captured the languid sunshine of the day, clinging to the roof of my mouth and corners of my memory like the brown grains of sand that remain in tiny folds in my suitcases.

Before that day in April, I had tasted pineapple, but not pineapple cultivated on ground only a few miles from my beach towel. Before that day in April, Ryan and I had traveled together, but not as a married couple, a team, a complete circle. Later that day, we decided to forego our planned island hopping and settled into island time.

Friends and travel forums extol restaurants around the island that boast delicately prepared fish and extravagant wine pairings, but I found myself looking forward to bowls of fresh fruit eaten at our breakfast buffet. Those chunks of pineapple, surrounded by mango and papaya, were a stolen dessert, one eaten before setting out to snorkel or swim or nap.

Dessert in the morning, day after day, promised that life could not get any better, and I think about those moments now, years later, when I add a whole pineapple to my cart, balking at the cost of the pre-cored, plastic containers of fruit.

When I needed a healthy treat to add to a party menu, I slid chunks of pineapple onto kabob sticks along with strawberries, melon, kiwi, blueberries, and blackberries, a rainbow of flavors, as delicious as they were healthy.

When my miscarriage shook my faith in my own body, I carefully separated the core of the pineapple, eating the tougher, bitter part of the fruit, fervently willing myself to believe the old wives tales that promised increased success with implantation.

When Abbey was ready to start “cutting things” with me in the kitchen, I armed her with a pink plastic knife from Ikea and showed her how to turn the long strip of fruit into bite-sized pieces. We ate her handiwork from the cutting board and from a bowl and from the refrigerator until the acid rendered our taste buds inoperable.

Planning a wedding for the end of April in Michigan meant giving up control of the weather. I hadn’t expected snow on the ground, and I hadn’t expected to discover a fruit I had eaten countless times before, but both unexpected moments are precious threads in the tapestry begun when a simple circle slid onto my finger and my heart.

This post is part of The Red Dress Club's RemembeRED, an exercise in memoir writing.  The prompt: This week, we'd like for you to write about your favorite fresh fruit or vegetable.

Concrit is always welcome!