Savor What's Left of Summer: Eat Melon in Salads!
Time is a construct of our tiny human minds. All the same, please maximize your honeydew and watermelon intake before it's too late.
IN MY NECK OF THE WOODS—both geographically and chronologically speaking—August is the time of year when humans begin to focus on eating as much summer produce as possible before the grocery stores start putting out displays of pumpkin-spice breath mints and pumpkin-spice probiotics and pumpkin-spice hand cream and room spray, and of course the actual pumpkins and their allegedly complementary pre-fab spices.
It makes me feel the way I do when clothing stores advertise wool turtlenecks and mittens during weather so hot I’m afraid to let the dog hang out in the yard too long for fear of baking her. What the holy hell is the big rush?
When I say “humans” I mostly mean me, of course, a person who experiences maudlin, panicked nostalgia at the first signs of summer’s end: The very minute the cantaloupes and honeydews and watermelons at the farmers market start to look ratty, and I realize I’ve yet to sit down at a picnic table with friends and kids nearby to eat cold slices of watermelon even once this summer, a season that gets shorter every year. Or seems to.
Which brings me to my chronological neck of the woods, meaning anyone over 45. I am talking about middle age.
While such thrills as birthday parties and roller-coaster rides are way too short when you’re a kid, summer is lifetimes long.
But when you’re middle aged, even the long events that bore into your soul seem to end in a flash. Life itself, for example. And boy oh boy is that a bracing realization. I recently decided not to buy a piece of furniture I liked and could afford after doing an ideological cost-benefit analysis. My conclusion was: I’ll be dead soon. I’m going to lug this enormous rustic table/desk into the afterlife?