This evening while picking green beans for dinner, I was transported in an instant and without warning, to a long forgotten moment. All it took was for me to bite into a bean - something I have done many times this summer without any moment of magic. Suddenly I was in the kitchen of my Grandparent's beach house, biting in to a bean. I could see, hear and feel what it had felt like to stand there decades ago. In that moment my heart swelled with the fullness of that place. I was there.
The beach house was more of a large cottage. It had thick, whitewashed walls and a thatch roof. It was on an estuary that shared tides with a world famous surf break and had the most magnificent beach. There were many years that we pretty much had the place to ourselves, a bunch of cousins roaming barefoot from dawn until dusk. By the time the house was sold 12 years ago, our white-washed walls were being surrounded by McMansions and attempts to create Miami in Africa. On a recent visit the natural beauty was all still there, just obscured at times by boats and houses.
My family has gathered there since my mother was a teenager and the 21 summers I spent there before moving to NYC, were a paradise of cousins, long summer days and family meals. There was always large volumes of fresh fruit and vegetables on our plates.
Who knows how and why a bean took me back there tonight, maybe it was the balmy evening after a sweltering afternoon, maybe it was some nuance of flavor and scent that triggered the deeply lodged memory. Whatever it was, I was for an unexpected instant in a different decade of my life and it was as real to me as the present. My heart was full. Amazing.
The beach house was more of a large cottage. It had thick, whitewashed walls and a thatch roof. It was on an estuary that shared tides with a world famous surf break and had the most magnificent beach. There were many years that we pretty much had the place to ourselves, a bunch of cousins roaming barefoot from dawn until dusk. By the time the house was sold 12 years ago, our white-washed walls were being surrounded by McMansions and attempts to create Miami in Africa. On a recent visit the natural beauty was all still there, just obscured at times by boats and houses.
My family has gathered there since my mother was a teenager and the 21 summers I spent there before moving to NYC, were a paradise of cousins, long summer days and family meals. There was always large volumes of fresh fruit and vegetables on our plates.
Who knows how and why a bean took me back there tonight, maybe it was the balmy evening after a sweltering afternoon, maybe it was some nuance of flavor and scent that triggered the deeply lodged memory. Whatever it was, I was for an unexpected instant in a different decade of my life and it was as real to me as the present. My heart was full. Amazing.
