The Fruit of Memory

Margaret stood in her granddaughter's apartment, surrounded by boxes from the attic. Sarah had insisted she help sort through decades of accumulation, but now the twenty-something was distracted by her phone, leaving Margaret alone with the ghosts of her past.

Her fingers brushed against something fuzzy in a dusty box—the teddy bear she'd hidden in during air raid drills, a childhood companion when her older brothers went to war. Not far away, she found it: the child's spy glass she'd used to watch for her brothers' return from the bus stop, wishing she could make the distance between them disappear.

"Grandma? What's this?" Sarah held up a faded photograph of a young woman in a victory roll, standing before a strange tree with enormous orange fruit.

Margaret smiled, the memory surfacing like warmth from a summer long past. "Your great-aunt Florence's papaya tree, 1947. She'd married a Navy man stationed in the Pacific, brought back seeds, planted them in our tiny Ohio backyard. Neighbors thought she was touched in the head."

"Did it grow?"

"Summer after summer, Auntie Florence tended that tree like it was a baby. Wrapped it in blankets every winter. Then came the year I turned twelve—she finally got one papaya, just one. She sliced it thin, made us all close our eyes before tasting. Said wisdom comes from trying what you've never known."

Sarah looked up from her phone, really looking now.

"That papaya tasted like sunshine," Margaret continued, "like all the places I'd never seen, all the adventures waiting beyond our street. Two months later, I packed that spy glass and my bear, took the train to Chicago for nursing school. The world was bigger than I'd imagined."

She squeezed Sarah's hand. "Your generation sees the whole world through that little screen. But sometimes the bravest adventures start with something as simple as tasting one strange fruit."

Sarah put down the phone. "Tell me more about Auntie Florence."