Happiness Is

Just now, awaiting the arrival of my dear friend Alyson to come pull me from the throes of lonesomeness and uncertainty (that's a WHOLE other metaphorical monster awaiting disclosure! But she's a soon-to-be-psychiatrist, so maybe she'll lend a hand there), I was peeling away the skin of some very ripe mangos. You see, we're going to confine all these mango chunks into a blender, flick the ON switch of the wheeling, jagged, sordid machine and mini-machety the saccharine fruit into juice. We'll add rum, of course. We'll sit by the pool and muse and laugh and chat and reminisce.

As I was peeling away the skin of one hunk of mango, a flashback backslapped me with a memory of climbing the (Haitian) mango tree behind St. Andrew's School. And then of being a fearless, bridle-less, invincible island boy: salt on my sunburned skin, sand imbedded in my sun-bleached hair. Sucking the seed of the mango I thought of two things: a few days ago, preparing a fruit bowel, my boss proclaimed "Why do mango's have such large seeds!" It was not a question; it was consternation. "So ya can suck da seed!" I explained, a distant Bahamian dialect inconspicuously following my words off the tip of my tongue. She didn't get it. She doesn't get much.

It secondly reminded me of my father, his voice, his view of life as an invariably beautiful thing. (In the endless wake of his passing, I find this distraughtingly ironic.) He would have said--and every soul out there who knew him, would know for sure, and could hear his voice--smiling, hunched over the sink with an over-flow of mango juice spilling down his chin: "Happiness is!"

Ironic, too, is that my mother--just yesterday--discovered a previously non-existant allergy to mangos. What luck. How sucky to not get to suck a mango seed!

None of this has much relevance to anything in the world, except that isn't it nice that biting into fruit can unearth the pleasantry that is fond memories.