- Share This Post
- Pin It
- 0
-
Sparkle (0)
On one standard hot day when I was living on a kibbutz in Israel I was assigned to work in the watermelon field. I was told that it was going to be horrible. But in the way that my optimism always outshines reality, I was excited to work at something new.
On one standard hot day when I was living on a kibbutz in Israel I was assigned to work in the watermelon field. In the way that people always have something bad to say about everything, I was told that it was going to be horrible, that it would be hot and it would be back-breaking since I would need to be bending down all the time. But in the way that my optimism always outshines reality, I was excited to work at something new. Tempt me with the new, with an adventure, and I will sign up.
Now that it’s hot my mind looks back to the time when I lived in Israel, especially when I have a watermelon. It’s no surprise that heat does that to me, since it was very hot over there half of the year, while the other half was a fall/spring combo that never required a lining in a raincoat. The one thing that I love about the summer on the East Coast is that there are these marvelous, refreshing rains every once in a while and even if the rains are warm, they’re still a break from the relentless shine of the sun. Israel has a dry season and a rainy season, which correspond to the summer and fall/spring combo.
I remember telling a friend on the kibbutz where I was living that I didn’t get why it wasn’t raining in the summer, that we needed a break. He looked at me and explained, as to a child, that not every place in the world has four seasons and not every place in the world has rain in the summer. Oh well, wasn’t I chastised from thinking that I was worldly since I came from New York City but in fact knew so little of other ways and places.
Our job (if I remember this correctly, since it was 27 years ago) was to pick the ripe melons and bring them to a truck on the side of the field. The negative-speakers were right, it was hot and it was hard. But that all dissipated when the crew leader told us that it was break time. In my life, I have never had as wonderful a break as this.
He took one of the watermelons, threw it down on a rock which split it in half. Those who had experience with watermelon field break-time knelt down and scooped up a hunk of red, dripping, watermelon with their field-dusted hands. The juice trickled down their arms and their faces. Another watermelon was sacrificed on the rock. My reticence over touching a watermelon with my hand (I was a knife and fork eater) which happened not to be clean was overcome in the “go with the flow” feeling that overcame all teachings from home when tempted enough.
In I went, scooping up my own hunk of melon. And in my teeth sank, more like melted, into the redness that was as ripe as ripe could be before souring into overripe. Surprisingly, the melon was cool, as if the hard shell protected the melon from predators and climate. It tasted red, and it tasted cool, and it tasted like a summer day that had
