The Death of a Duck

(In case the title wasn't already enough of a spoiler for you, here's the story.)

I grew up in a house that has a backyard adjacent to a canal. During the spring, it was a common occurrence for me to see entire broods of Muscovy duckling waddling to and fro and paddling their way across the canal, their little webbed feet working furiously under the water in an attempt to keep up with their mother. Over the course of a few days, it was not uncommon to see a well-populated brood dwindle to only a handful of ducklings awkwardly tumbling behind the mother duck.

Being exposed to not other wild animals besides the Muscovy ducks, I went through a period in my childhood in which I suddenly declared that ducks were my absolute favorite animals in the entire world, in particular the Pekin variety. And as it often is with children's desires, I wanted a pet duck.

Naturally, my parents refused, stating that I could pretend that all of the Muscovy ducks belonged to me. In my child's mind, Muscovy ducks, with warty, red growths encroaching across their bills, were no where near the same caliber of finesse as the Pekin duck, but I was still content to provide them with bits of bread to eat.

To further add insult to injury, my mother ordered me to never, EVER  go near my "pet" ducklings.

"Well, why not?" I huffed.

"Because the mother duck with very over-protective, and if she sees you trying to go for her babies, she will attack you."

I shuddered. Why would she attack the person feeding her bits of bread?

"Ducks don't understand loyalty, Barbara," Mom explained.

My curiosity had been provoked. "Then how would she attack if she's not loyal to her duckies?"

"Oh, no, she's loyal to them. Not to us. She'd bite."

"Do duck bites hurt, Mommy?"

"Yes, I tell you this from experience. Don't get close to them." The severity in her tone suggested that I should heed her warning. I always made sure that whenever I gave the ducks bread, I would stay several feet away. It was difficult to see a number of fluffy, peeping ducklings and not be able to caress one of them. I wondered if I would ever get the chance to touch a duckling someday.

That chance would come. Several years ago, Miami faced a period in which it rained for three days straight that led to floods. This continuous rain, oddly enough, was not related to a hurricane pattern. Still, this meteorological fluke ensured impromptu school closures and prohibited people from safely driving to work. It was great to be able to stay home with Mom and Dad and feel like I had somehow struck gold from not going to school.

The novelty waned by the second day. During the rainstorm, I lamented being cooped in my room and dreamed about going outside to walk around the canal's edge, its presence taunting me from the window. All of a sudden, amid a strong gust parting the water, I spotted a flash of yellow.

With the rain's relentless pounding in thick curtains of water, it was difficult at first to decipher what the yellow bundle could possibly be when I saw it move!

There was no mistaking the clumsy waddle. It was a lost duckling! I yelled for my parents to come look.

"Mom! Dad! There's a duckling outside! It's all alone. What should we do?"

Without hesitation, Dad slipped on his American school bus yellow raincoat and marched deftly into the pelting rain to save the duckling.

I was so happy! My family would finally have a real pet duckling to take care of! For the time-being, Mom contrived a little home for the duckling using a plastic crate, a towel and some old newspapers. I thought the accommodations were too spartan for him and asked my mother if I could place a duck plushie to make him feel even more at home.

"Absolutely not," Mom replied.

As the duckling cheeped and explored his relatively cozy confines, I hovered above the crate and watched his every move.

My mind raced with what I would name the duckling, deeming "Quackers" as being a suitable option. Yes, I had only known the duckling for a few hours, but by naming it, I demonstrated a deep sense of attachment. In fact, the way I glowered at it prompted my mother to tell me to go off and leave the duckling alone.

I didn't want to, of course.

"For how long should I leave him?"

"Oh...a few minutes. He needs his peace and quiet, too."

I went to my room and stared at the clock, waiting for "a few minutes" to pass. Twenty minutes to be sufficient time to have left Quackers on his own. Thinking that he was probably hungry, I ran to the kitchen and scrounged for a slice of bread, betting that Quackers would love to eat what he found in his natural habitat. The spongy slice in hand, I made a beeline for his crate. I stood on my tiptoes and looked down at him.

Quackers laid on his side, no longer peeping.

I bent my knees and gently nudged his little plump body with an index finger, seeing if he would react to my presence. Nothing.

His limp body rolled back and forth based on how poked him. Still nothing. He remained inert and silent.

I couldn't understand it. He was fine only a few minutes ago, and now he's not moving, I thought.

"Mommy? What's wrong with Quackers?"

Mom peered over the crate and gave a sharp intake of breath. What she said next was uttered in a soothing tone, the one mothers reserve for when they are faced with the difficult task of needing to comfort while presenting bad news.

"Oh...Barbara. I think he's died."

Until that fateful moment, death had been a foreign concept to me. Yes, I was aware that it happened to other people and animals, and that it was met with sadness. In fact, when I was even younger, I wasn't able to understand that Charlie the German Shepherd from All Dogs Go to Heaven was supposed to be dead and escaping death throughout the whole film. (Huh. Another title with a spoiler.)

This poignant moment marked the first true encounter that I had with the senseless loss of life. Not only had my hopes of finally having a pet duckling been dashed, Quackers wouldn't even have the chance for me to show him how much my family and I would love him in the comfort of a warm home.

My child self was distraught and reacted by the only means possible: crying.

But I didn't just simply cry. Oh, no. In that despair, it was if someone had opened the floodgates to my soul.

I sobbed until my eyes ached and were reduced to swollen, red globules. My anguish made me inconsolable to the extent that my parents' voice of reason and attempts to quell my tears were deflected. Life became a blur.

An hour later, my father coaxed me towards him to join him in watching a bout of television. Cuddling me closer to his side, he decided to embark on educating me about how life was not fair.

"I'b gobing to miss the bucky, Dabby," I snorted thickly, my voice muffled with a heavy coating of snot. "Why dib he hab to die?"

"Look, honey, I know it's not just to see something so small and innocent pass away, but death is another part of this life. And, yes, it is unfortunate, but you can't let it stop you from living. All you can do now is remember the good times you had with the ducky."

His words probably would have had a bigger impact had my allotted time with Quackers surpassed more than a mere three hours.

"But he dibbint deserb to die so soon," I bawled.

"Think about this: at least he died surrounded by people instead of being all alone in the wild, right?"

"Uh-huh."

"We made sure he was comfortable in his final moments on this Earth. So, don't worry. He is going to be okay, as are you. Now, let's watch the T.V."

I don't recall which program we had sat down to watch. I gave a bleary glare at the dancing images bouncing off the screen. My raspy breathing slowed, the inhales steady, the exhales calm. The tears stopped.

"Yes, that's it. You see?"

A sniffle was my answer.

"Here, let's just keep watching the T.V., all right? It'll distract you."

"Okay, Daddy."

My poor father. Not even he could have predicted that the very first commercial to appear during the commercial break would be for a toilet cleaning product which has for a mascot... a small, quacking duck.



The following is a rough interpretation of how the commercial, with its unfortunate timing, sounded in my head.

Fast-forward a couple of decades and you will find me not only using "Canard," the French version of said toilet cleaner, but also occasionally feasting on Magret de Canard without batting an eye.

As it was, Quackers wouldn't be the only pet duck in my life, and that one led a more successful and happier time with us.

But that's a story for another day.

Barb the French Bean

The Potency of Café Cubano (Cuban Coffee)

Returning to my roots in Miami as I do for one month every summer gives me the opportunity to re-examine the things that are in absence of my life in France. For the first few days of what will ultimately be a brief stay, I am lured by the bright blue skies frequently interrupted by spurts of intense showers and decent Cuban cuisine. Amid the comestibles to re-discover, Cuban coffee is at the top of the list.

Being an avid coffee drinker, I'd like to believe that I have a good tolerance for caffeine. There have been times in which people have told me that they customarily stave from drinking any more of the liquid gold past four in the afternoon to prevent undergoing a sleepless night. I contemplate how I have never been able to understand this behavior as I drink my fourth cup of java at six o'clock in the evening.

I should mention that while I do have access to Cuban coffee while living in France, I ration myself to one cup of café con leche in the mornings and supply the rest of the intake with either soluble Nescafé or whatever is offered in the local bars in town. Be what it may, my resistance to caffeine is quite strong and don't have any issues going to bed at a decent time. 

Or so I thought.

On one fine afternoon, I sought shelter from the dense humidity seeping the Miami streets like a suffocating wool blanket and found myself glancing at a menu selling several drink varieties of café cubano. As the time was nearing 5:30 p.m., I reasoned that a café con leche would be too much to drink and that its smaller cousin, the cortadito, would hit the spot. True, while the volume of the cortadito seems puny in comparison to the run-of-the-mill Starbucks latte giants, its power lies in the sweetened espresso mixed with just the right amount of milk. 

I stared at the menu. I read the words "cortadito/colada." I made a mental note that when it would be my turn to place an order, I should say "cortadito" with conviction.

Cortadito, cortadito, cortadito. 

The person in front of me left the line. I stepped closer to the counter. The attendant asked me what I would like to order.

My mind thought "cortadito, cortadito, cortadito."

My mouth uttered "colada." 

In the haze of that silent chant, my mind didn't notice the mistake until I was handed a small cup filled with four shots of sweetened espresso. 

My brain screamed "WHAT THE HELL?! THIS ISN'T WHAT I HAD ORDERED!!! SHE GOT MY ORDER WRONG!!!" In the moment I was going to make my musings vocal, a little voice that had played the past few minutes in vivid succession recalled that, actually, yes, I had indeed ordered a colada, that I was too stupid to have not realized the error earlier and that it was now too late to backtrack and ask the poor attendant to make me another drink.

I forced a smile, paid for the drink then slumped away from the counter preparing myself to face the fate of drinking four sweetened shots of dark espresso. With the colada in hand, I imagined that this was what a walk to the gallows must have been like. I had resigned myself to facing severe heart palpitations and possibly never sleeping again.

Both the mind and mouth pleaded for me not to drink it. I drank it anyway.

At first, it seemed as if the colada's potency would have no effect on me. Yes, I felt more alert than I had been some moments before, but as far as I could tell, there was no perceivable difference as to how I would have felt had I downed a simple cortadito. I was duped into thinking that I was the caffeine-resistant champion of Java land.

I didn't go to sleep until 4:30 a.m.

Now I know why people here refer to the coffee as "Cuban Crack."

Barb the French Bean

The Joys of Jet Lag (And How to Get Back on Track)

As a frequent traveler who makes it a point to cross the Atlantic ocean at least twice a year, I'd like to think that I've become a pro at handling the extreme changes of adapting suddenly to a new time zone.

Granted, the six-hour change from French time to the American Eastern Standard Time isn't that drastic of an alteration, but it certainly provides enough inconvenience to perturb sleeping and eating patterns. On that note: I've found that even a minor one-hour change from France to the British Isles created some disgruntled moments as I debated whether or not to wait eating breakfasts, lunches, and dinners at a later time.

Here are some tips.

1) STAY AWAKE.

Did you leave at ten in the morning, take a ten hour flight, and suddenly found yourself at having lunch at two in the afternoon when your body was convinced that it was 8 p.m.? It may prove difficult, but forcing your body to remain alert is the quickest way to getting into your new time zone's groove. Generally wait until it is night time before catching some Zs. Supply extra shots of espresso when needed.

And, if anything, think yourself a time-traveler whose mission it was to go back six hours in the past to relay an important message. Remaining awake is vital to this operation!

2) Have enough time to adapt. 

I can only speak from my experience, but I generally have required two to four days of adjustment before obtaining a sense of normalcy, regardless on which side of the Atlantic I'm in.

3) Be busy.

Planning to visit some friends and family back home? Make an appointment for 10 a.m. sharp on the day after you arrive. Make dinner plans to be on the safe side.

4) COFFEE.

I cannot stress how much you and caffeine will become BBFs in these crucial days. Oh, you don't like coffee? Fine. Get yourself some potent English tea or a nauseatingly-saccharine energy drink.

I've usually had no trouble adapting if I applied these tactics. However, I had not anticipated how much my body would be thrown off by the effort of flying to the United States, adapting within four days, only to then face the change in Daylight Saving time (thereby subtracting one hour), ONLY to then return to France within a period of ten days.

The weekend simply wasn't enough time for me to return to normal, which explained why I found myself cooking steak well past midnight (for my stomach said it was dinner time). My students also have the joy of having an escaped Zombie extra from The Walking Dead for a teacher. I am completely drained and plagued by a constant headache.

And sleep? Forget that! I mistakenly took a nap at six p.m. Now, I am perky and alert.

It is now 4:46 a.m. French time. No use in going back to sleep because I work within a few hours. Maybe I'll update this post with some cartoons later in the week.

*This post has been brought to you by jet lag.* 

Barb the French Bean

Home

For the past five years, I've become a bit of a nomad, alternating between moving to France, then back to the place where I grew up, then back to France. As each day passes in my life in France, I am reminded of how much of a foreigner I truly am, language mishaps and differences aside.

However, with time, I've begun to slowly acclimate myself to the spoken and unspoken social cues the French have: always greeting store clerks and cashiers with a "Bonjour," acquiescing an agreement with a wispy, gasp-like "ouais" or a small "mhn" accompanied by a quick nod, always stopping to have the mid-morning "pause café," always respecting mealtimes and eating meals in small courses, hardly ever raising one's voice mid-conversation. The small things that used to trip me up and target me with some invisible bulls-eye have since become ingrained into my very being. I don't feel so out of place anymore.

Every once in a while, though, I find myself longing for a slightly more comfortable and familiar existence, one which makes a little more sense to me. I find myself missing "home."

Then arises the complex question that all expats face with discomfort: what is home, exactly? For those who have never traveled or lived elsewhere, that question is answered rather easily. It is not the case for someone like me.

(Should a French person or foreigner inquire about my origins, I answer that I come from Miami. It's a quicker response and leads to the inevitable awestruck observation of wonderment in which the person in question cannot understand why I ever left Miami.)

Is "home" the anchor of one's childhood and adolescence? It is the current mailing address where telephone bills and bank statements arrive? Is "home" the place where all of my stuff is located? Is "home" tangible, or is it a state of mind?

Thinking to my own mother, a Colombian who grew up in Cartagena, Colombia, "home" for her was Cartagena. Except she left "home" at the age of sixteen only to move to Venezuela, Puerto Rico and then the United States. Throughout her adult life, she had not gone "home" for over thirty-two years, and by the time she did, the Cartagena of her youth was replaced by a more modern Cartagena that felt at once familiar and foreign to her. Things were the same and at once...unspeakably different.

I decided that I needed to pay a visit to Miami to see for myself.

I got the window seat. As the 10-hour flight neared the end, gliding over the sparkling turquoise and teal waters of the Bahamian islands, the pilot announced that we would arrive in Miami International Airport in approximately twenty minutes. It was then that after a seven-month hiatus I caught my first aerial glimpse of the land where I was raised. Flat lands intermingled by a series of dark, murky canals and of complex gray highways snaking in every direction, its streams of rapid transit zooming in quick fashion, various tidy sections of housing developments and coral gabled houses with pristine swimming pools in the backyard and, way in the distance, the unconquered swamps and marshes of the Everglades. This was South Florida. This was my old home.

So what is "home" to me? Home is familiar. Home is where I can relax and breathe a little more easily. That can be in the comfort of my bedroom in Miami or in Sablé-sur-Sarthe.

Home can be the place where people still refer to me as "La Niña" (the girl) rather than Madame. Home can be the place where people refer to me as Madame rather than "La Niña." 

Home is where I can have palitroques, pastelitos de queso and croquetas de jamón for breakfast. 

Palitroque: crunchy Cuban breadsticks
Pastelitos: Cuban pastries
Croquetas: Croquettes

(This is also as close as I am going to get to 'Instagramming' my food. Enjoy)

It can be the place where I have a café au lait with tartines or un croissant au beurre if I so choose. 

Home, for me, is both France and the United States. 

However, as my current physical location is in South Florida, I will elaborate on what "home" is like in the United States. 

Home is multi-colored Surinam cherries dangling off branches like early Christmas ornaments.

Home is bright, cloudless skies during "dry" season*.

*Should you choose to visit Florida during "wet" season (mid-April to mid-November), I highly advise that you bring an umbrella and a hair straightener.

Home is the large bougainvillea with magenta petals in the backyard. 

Home is where I find spiders relaxing among their gossamer threads.

Home is the canal where I would spend many an afternoon in my youth throwing pebbles to observe the expanding ripple effect on the water, gingerly tiptoeing on its edge and risking falling in just to peer at its length in the distance, and waiting, waiting ever so patiently for that one second to spot a fish breaking the tranquil surface to emancipate itself towards the sky.

Home is seeing a mother Muskovy duck leading her cheeping brood of fluffy ducklings and they make me remember fondly the Muskovy duckling that my family raised when I was ten years old.

But then, I start to notice things that are indeed different about home:

The mango tree's growth is considerably stunted, much smaller than I had anticipated. (Mom had had its branches trimmed to strengthen its growth).

The remnants of former trees are depicted by lone stumps.

The hole which was used as a shelter by brooding Muskovy ducks as their nesting ground has since been covered in dirt.

I find the people loud, boisterous. They cut each others' sentences to state their point. The driving is erratic. Repetitive chain stores dot the landscape.

Then, I realized amid my nostalgia that I was no longer even "home": the mundane details which escaped my daily existence and which I would have otherwise not even appreciated have been captured in photographs, as if I were another tourist visiting Florida.

Then, as further proof that things are indeed different, I took a good look at myself. How was I dressed? I had opted to go outside sporting not flip-flops (or, as I was accustomed to occasionally, barefoot) but rain boots because I couldn't bear the thought of having my feet being tickled by the blades of grass and its cold, morning dew.

Living in the muddy French countryside has instilled an aversion to having wet feet. 

My obtained paleness provided further evidence that something was off about myself in correlation to my surroundings. Even indoor-dwelling Floridians who make it a habit to remain living comfortably in the air conditioning have a darker complexion.

Bumbling about my first home, where I vaguely remember the locations of various items in the kitchen, makes me start to miss my second home (and the knowledge of having enough rosemary and black pepper).

But I know the drill now: by the time I do make it back to my second home and settle into my daily routines, I will start to miss the first one with nostalgic familiarity. As an expat, I am in a perpetual home limbo, which I have since resigned to accept.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

Barb the French Bean

French Internet Ads: The Ironic Edition

Hi. If you are new to this blog, allow me to give you a very warm welcome to Two Beans or Not Two Beans and to the very first blog post of 2013.

(If you aren't new to this blog, welcome back. I do ask that you please bear with me for a few paragraphs here. The funny stuff will eventually appear.)

I felt that if I wanted this blog post to make any ironic sense, I would need to explain to you all my personal back story. So, here it goes:

I am an American citizen, a common fate that falls upon those who so happen to be born in Union City, New Jersey a little over 25 years ago. I didn't grow up in New Jersey. Yea, at the tender age of five years old, my family decided that it would be beneficial to my education to move to the glorious city of Miami, Florida. My education benefited, but a love of Combos, Hershey's chocolate bars and McDonald's combined with Miami's pedestrian unfriendliness certainly had a detrimental effect on my waistline.

High school came along and thanks to my perseverance and hard work, I obtained a scholarship that paid for most of my university education. Not only did I study as a full-time Literature major with a French minor student, I also worked for three unforgettable years in a law office until I was laid-off due to the economic housing crisis of 2008.

Prior to said lay-off, I took a two-week vacation to France in late April/early May that same year. It was a trip of lifetime, one that had been in the making since I took French as a foreign language elective in middle school back in seventh grade and high school. In my inexperienced mind, just being able to visit France would somehow mark me with a sense of accomplishment, the achievement of managing to follow through with a dream.

Little did I know that those two weeks would change me forever. For the first time in my life, quite inexplicably, I felt a sense of being and belonging. I fell absolutely and irrevocably in love with the country. France beckoned me.

I wanted to move there. Permanently.

In 2009, amid shuffling from one hourly-paying temporary job to the next in Miami, I got the chance to work as an English Teaching Assistant for two years in Dijon, France. I thought then that I would be at my happiest to remain in Dijon. Alas, as with most contractual jobs, it didn't last long. I faced returning back to Miami and kissing good-bye my heartbroken starry-eyed hope.

I wasn't too worried about the prospect of finding another job in Miami. After all, it is a large, tourist town that is always in need of highly-skilled, hard-working and intelligent people. Without sounding too pigheaded, I wagered that I easily met the requirements: I'm tri-lingual, I have a (albeit somewhat laughable) college degree, and I have six years of total work experience ranging from secretarial duties to legal knowledge to pedagogic knack.

Those skills weren't good enough with Miami's lagging job market. Almost no companies were offering full-time positions, and the ones that were simply required too much qualifications or expectations of their potential candidates. (Hell, I couldn't even get a job in a crappy, two-rate casino if I wanted.)

Weeks passed. I found myself unemployed for three months. Then four months. Then half a year. Then an entire year had gone by in which I was led on a handful of fruitless wild goose chases searching for any job. To make matters personally direful, I kept reminiscing of "the good ol' days" back in France. Rage seethed deep within my being. Why, oh why, couldn't I have obtained a job that would have let me remain there???

Then, last July, an answer came. I was offered a job to return to France. I would teach in an agricultural high school. After a year and three months of unemployment and feeling that no one in Miami recognized my potential, I accepted the position. And I moved back to France.

TL;DR version: quit being a lazy bum and read. Not every bit of information can get handed to you on a literary concise silver platter.

I've been happily living in Sablé-sur-Sarthe for almost five months now, and I have been gradually getting into the rhythm of my new job and new life, such as knowing when the local supermarket closes (7:30 p.m. Monday-Thursday and Saturday; it stays open until 8 p.m. on Fridays. Eight. Pee. Emm. Ooh, that's late!).

And living abroad in France means that I will naturally be using French internet, which indicates that any annoying ads that are displayed on various websites will be marketing stuff to the French. Bien sûr.

Yet a few of these ads have certainly struck a chord in me. 13 advertisements, to be exact. While I have gotten used to seeing mini-ads for French McDonald's for something laughably called "Bagel Stories"...

What's more Kosher than a bagel cheeseburger with bacon?

...I'll admit that I couldn't help but feel uncomfortably odd when I saw the slew of ads for the French to apply for an American green card so they could have the opportunity to move and find a job in the United States.

Exhibit A:

You only have 29 days to come inside now, American.

Exhibit B:

"Do you already have your American passport?" Yep. I'm fairly certain I have that safely covered.

Exhibit C:

You only have 10 days left to board your plane back to the U.S., American.

Exhibit D:

"Rapid Special: you can register for the Green Card program to live and work in the USA. DON'TMISSYOURCHANCE." (See? I'm a busy businessman busily pointing at my busy wristwatch. In fact, I'm so busy that I can't even remember to press the space bar between certain words, but who has time to do that? BTW, how do you like my backwards photoshopped Old Glory? Pretty swanky, huh?)

And continuing with the time theme, Exhibit E:

"Time's passing by/running out. Click here to register for the American Green Card Lottery. " It's like running a marathon! And look! The flag is facing the right way this time!

Exhibit F:

Oh, so you don't like ads with the American flag? Fine. Here's one without the red, white and blue theme.

Exhibit G:

Actually, never mind. A green card ad without the Americana theme is pretty lame. Here's your chance to upload your  photo for your "green card" (yes, in quotation marks/inverted commas). By the way, you only have until October 2012 to upload your photo for your "green card."

Exhibit H:

The other airplane ad only gave you ten days to board the plane. We give you 13 days!  THIRTEEN DAYS. Oh emm gee.

 Exhibit I:

And if you don't board a plane, you'll get TWENTY DAYS to register! Do it before it's too late! (And, yeah, ignore the fact that we didn't include an American flag in this ad. Shut up.)

 Exhibit J:

"Are you looking for a job? Win a Green Card to work in the United States!" Approved by happy office workers everywhere! (Gee, and to think that I spent a year and three months unemployed back home. Had I known that all I needed was a green card, I would have applied for one ages ago.)

 Exhibit K:

"Haven't you ever dreamt of celebrating the 4th of July with US all?" (I'll admit that this particular ad wasn't too badly done, but it doesn't even mention the "green card" explicitly.)

Exhibit L:

Oddly enough, this ad was in English. However, unlike the airplane ads in French which gave you ample time,  you only get 23 hours to register. Huh. 

And finally, Exhibit M:

"Opened louse a better future." Yes. Louse. I suspect that this ad meant to say "ouverte pouR" (opened for), but once you drop off the "R" in "pour," the word changes to "louse." Either way, opening a louse for any reason sounds drastically nasty.

 Well, there you have it. I, an American citizen, can apply for a "green card" so I can return to the U.S. and find a job. Or I could stay in France with the job I currently have.

But fear not, my friends. In case neither situation works out for me, I have a potential third option:

"Become a Canadian citizen" It doesn't mention anything about actually moving to and working in Canada, though. Just become a citizen. 

Barb the French Bean

Something That Makes Me Happy...And Something That Doesn't

The thing that makes me happy:

They come every year around April and in different colors. I seek them among the branches as I would  a delectable treasure. They are good at hiding under the leaves, but I find them. Sunshine yellow. Lime green. Sunset orange. And a vivid scarlet.

The best ones to eat are the red ones. I love it when the plump, accordion ridges are ready to burst after they have ripened on the bushes that line the fence.

I silently revel that they are almost the same shade as my nail polish.

As I wash them, my mother tells me childhood recollections of these fruits. In her hometown, there were a series of trees that towered several meters above her. After a rainfall, the emerald blades of grass would be dotted by splashes of warm colors as she and her siblings would scurry to collect them for their home.

I bite into each sumptuous cherry. The best ones, the ones to have reached their peak, have a flavor that is a subdued mixture between Ranier cherries and mangoes. I think back to my Mother's youth and wonder if her child self felt elation from eating something that was undeniably pure.

Having missed out on this little pleasure, that of eating Surinam cherries and sharing the moment with my family for almost three years, I had substituted my tropical cherries with a different variety when I lived in a temperate zone. While the flowers were more aesthetically pleasing, the taste simply wasn't the same. I often take the little things for granted.

As for the thing that doesn't make me happy:

No comment.

Barb the French Bean