Ten days eating grapes makes watermelon magical.

I’ve always been a watermelon eater. As a kid, grandma had cold watermelon in the fridge all summer long. We’d eat a whole, giant watermelon, just the two of us, in an afternoon, sitting in her garden with the birds and honeybees and a shaker of salt.

These watermelons were not the wussy watermelons we eat today. These were the size of a two-year old child, dotted with big black fertile seeds. I’d spit them in the grass, I’d spit them in the garden, and some I’d plant among the zinnias.

We didn’t bother with plates and forks and spoons. Grandma would cut thick slices, I mean 2 inches thick, then she’d cut them into half moons.

I’d start by taking big, juicy bites, juice running down my bare chest, up to my elbows and dripping onto my legs. As I ate deeper and deeper, the rind would reach my ears, leaving my cheeks wet and sticky, until I’d eaten all the red and pink right down to the white part.

It was a good thing Grandma would have the rotating sprinkler on that kept her weedless grass green and her flower-laden garden blooming all summer long. And it was a good thing I was in my cotton panties… in later years, of course, I was in my bathing suit.

Grandma and me were serious watermelon eaters, but we’d laugh until we were crying. While we’d eat until our stomachs were bulging, she’d tell me the story of how when she was a kid, her and her brothers and sisters would eat the watermelon growing out under the fences along the road in rural Kentucky.

No wonder I loved my grandma so much. She’d peel me oranges ’til I had my fill, too. But that’s a different story.

I can’t eat watermelon without thinking of the best grandma that ever lived.

Postscript: So, this post is going up without photographs because I’m tired of waiting on myself to add them. I have a very good reason to publish it, which soon you will discover. Read this and you will uncover some deep “truths” about me if you care to dig.

(Written July 2016)