the juiciest peach...

5.11.2006

California
Originally uploaded by marytree.

This has always been a favorite picture of mine. This is me, at 20 years old, with four friends. This picture was taken in Wyoming on our way California to see the Grateful Dead in San Francisco. We all took off for 2 weeks driving my little toyota tercel and a vw bus. Before we made it to the show we were going to stay at a place called Butano state park on the California coast not far from san francisco. The directions the park ranger gave led us up a 2 lane winding road. There were fruit trees and horse farms, and after driving through Nebraska and Iowa it was paradise. We drove past Alice's restaurant and stopped at a little farmstand in Pescadero. They had peaches the size of a 16" softball. Now, growing up in Illinois we were used to getting maybe a baseball sized peach and out of all the peaches in a summer maybe one or two was juicey and sweet. Usually, they were mealy and hard. These California peaches were lush with fuzz so soft it was hard to take the first bite. But take that bite we did and they were the juiciest, loveliest peaches I had ever had. I can still taste the sweetness of them and feel the juice dribbling down my chin.
I often think about those peaches and going back to that little farmstand on the winding road. I remember my hair blowing in the california breeze, the smell of citrus and seashore, the giant redwood trees that made you feel so small and your life so young. Mostly, I remember feeling free. Having the kids, a husband, a dog and cat makes feeling free sometimes a distant memory, but on those days when I roll down the windows and look in my rearview mirror and see Annie and Maddie's hair blowing in the wind, the wild look of freedom in their eyes, I too feel free. And when I buy those first peaches of the summer and we sit on the kitchen floor and take the first bite, and sweet juice flows down our chins I think of the day when my two girls will experience those first flushes of freedom and I hope they have such great friends to share it with.

Mama Says Om theme: Juicy