Skip to main content

Guava Jam

 I would love to see tree-climbing classes for all ages and skill levels at one of the parks in my town. We have several lovely ones and they all have climbable trees - not ones I would attempt at my age but someone younger can easily do it. Recently, I was out to lunch with a former co-worker and one of the dishes features guava jam. 

It immediately triggered memories of the lovely guava tree on our side of the fence with branches going well into our neighbor's garden. This was my favorite tree to climb as a kid and the single greatest attraction for my friends to come over to my place. When guavas were in season there would be a half a dozen of us up on different branches feasting on the fruit until we had had our fill and ready to descend. There are few memories from childhood that can beat the brightness and perfection of those sunny afternoons when I was up on that tree, stuffing myself with guavas. This is not quite like the tree-climbing described in this article but I would take it anyway - just to come close to that memory

After getting suited up, instructors showed them how to tie a rope and connect it to their harness. They were also taught the best method for climbing trees based on factors such as the size or distance from its trunk.

L heard me describe my guava tree climbing and smiled. She could tell it had been a highlight of my childhood. Though there had been no trees to climb in her urban neighborhood when she was that age, she could still relate - there is always something in a kid's life that is similarly picture perfect.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t
111 comments
Read more

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha
5 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques
6 comments
Read more