Stone Cold Steve Fruit

Or, "Stone (Cold) Fruit (Comfort)?

Another heat wave is coming. There’s a prowler on the loose in my neighborhood, prying the bars off apartment windows and terrorizing sleeping inhabitants. Everyone I know is either sick of having a job or sick of not having a job. I start and end the day stinking from sweat, showers’ effects waning after half an hour. It’s bleak. Until you take a big, juicy bite of a peach.

It turns out…the world was made good. Trees, birds, fruits. Things that are just there if you remember them. Surefire ways to banish malaise, beat off depression! Unless, I guess, the tree falls on your head, the bird poops on your head, someone throws fruit at your head. But a thorn to every rose, etc.

The other day I turned grimly from my phone’s weather app displaying a wall of 90+ degree forecasts as far as the eye could scroll and picked up a ripe peach from a box on the counter. My friend Frankie recently delivered the box from her mother who picked them from her backyard orchard. Her mother sent apologies that they weren’t as sweet as they should be, due to a May cold snap (what was cold?). I took a bite. They were perfectly sweet, perfectly ripe, perfectly perfect peaches.

Three days later and only one remains. Not enough to get us through the heat wave, but enough to remind us what heat can do. It can make a peach.