Summer Memories of Watermelon Sugar

Project 365, Day 158/365

For many, summer unofficially starts on Memorial Day. For me, it starts when I slice into my first watermelon. I wait for it all fall, winter, and spring. Impatiently. Watermelon is my favorite fruit, and it makes the heat of summer that much more bearable for me. Today, as I took my first trip to a grocery store since May 2020, I meandered the aisles like a lost child. It felt like I had forgotten how to shop. I didn’t know where anything was. I didn’t know the new rules. But what I did know was that I was going home with a watermelon. I did what any connoisseur would do: sharpened their knowledge base before diving in. I studied this chart entitled “How to Pick a Perfect Watermelon,” familiarizing myself with all the tall tale signs of a juicy, ruby gem.

Hours later, standing at my kitchen counter with my long chef’s knife in hand, watermelon on my cutting board, I readied myself for the start of a new season. Having spent the day prior on the sand on a day jaunt to Santa Barbara, slathering sunscreen on my arms and legs, it felt like time. Things were about to get juicy.

I love how a tight watermelon “pops” when your knife crosses the threshold of the thick outer skin. It’s the precursor before you know whether you just wasted money on a mushy, grainy mess, or whether magic lies within. Sadly, today, mine was the former, but I was able to salvage some pieces to get me through until I try again. As I wiped up the pink drippings trailing off my cutting board, I had a strong memory pull back. I call it that because sometimes, it feels like your brain is being yanked backwards to see something, leaving your body in place.

My mom always bought watermelon in the summer when I was a kid. There wasn’t a hot, muggy Florida weekend between the months of June and September that didn’t seem to be accompanied by one.

I remember sitting on the almost too-hot sidewalk in front of my childhood home, where the street gutter opened up. There was no grass in that little arch on the concrete and as a kid, it felt like an ideal perch for living life. I can still feel the pokey, gritty concrete on my thigh skin, brushing off any remnants or dirt from the back of my legs after standing, dimpled with the pattern of the ground.

Watermelon never seemed to be cut up in cubes back then. And definitely no “Tik Tok hack” long, skinny sticks. Nope, watermelon in the late 1980s and ’90s was either cut in small triangles, or you were just given a quarter piece resembling the shape of a boat to dig your face into. Juice dripping down your cheeks and chin as you spit out black, slick seeds.

…Skin warm and pink from the sun, toes all raisiny from hours in the water with my siblings, friends, cousins.

I can recall the exact feeling of being tightly wrapped in a somewhat scratchy pool towel, my wet suit turning chilly when the breeze caught it, hair slicked back, trickling water down my back. The towel, wrapped and then tucked into itself under my left armpit, was the perfect bib-slash-napkin as a kid. Skin warm and pink from the sun, toes all raisiny from hours in the water with my siblings, friends, cousins. My parents’ outdoor furniture was of the times: thick, plastic-y outdoor fabric that always seemed to need some power washing to strip off mold, slightly faded from the sun, striped. I’m struggling to remember the color, but I’m thinking they were green and white. The frames of the chairs were like PVC pipes, twisted together to form the shape of a chair or a longer lounge. There were other outdoor furniture sets eventually. If I squeeze my brain a little, I can see the chairs that had a metal frame, but the seats themselves were made from straps of plastic, possibly rubber…probably plastic-y rubber, in a pretty robin’s egg blue. If I was wearing shorts or a swimsuit, they’d leave the imprint on my legs and tush after peeling myself off.

Having a pool as a kid felt like I hit the childhood jackpot. Looking back, I’m sure to my dad, who had to maintain the thing, it felt like adult prison. Skimming, chlorinating, balancing, sweeping. Many a Saturday morning was spent heading to the local Pinch-a-Penny pool supply store to grab a yellow tub of chlorine. Nothing bothered my dad more than a heavy rainstorm after a marathon of getting all the chemicals just right. Depending on how bad the storm was, the water would come up right to the edge of the limestone deck, well past the square maroon tiles with a white center medallion. If you squinted, you’d think it was an infinity-edge pool. But those didn’t exist in the collective mainstream yet. Maybe not even at all. Sometimes, he’d send us out there to cannonball into the water, letting the water empty by a few inches so he didn’t have to bring out the long blue hose to drain the pool. He hated draining that pool. A few days later, the yellowish, greenish algae would start growing along the sloping sides of the pool floor and walls. My dad? As thrilled as he was about draining the pool.

I slurped a bevy of juice straight from my arm, catching it before it passed my elbow…

I ate so much watermelon on that front sidewalk curb. And even more wrapped in a tight towel on a chair on the pool deck. I slurped a bevy of juice straight from my arm, catching it before it passed my elbow, because well, you can’t really reach anything with your tongue beyond a few inches above your elbow, of course. Oh man did I try. There were occasionally hot dogs or burgers my dad would grill up. If we were out of propane, my mom would just cook them inside, bringing them out on a melamine platter for us to grab. There were so many melamine platters. In fact, when I went away to college, my mom thought to buy me a bunch of random melamine platters she bought on clearance at some store or another. Why? I’m not sure, but that’s the kind of thing she does. And yeah…she loves her melamine platters, clearly.

My summer days at that pool are long gone. My parents sold the house years ago, downsizing to something with less maintenance, my dad reclaiming his weekends without having to mess around with a pool. But the link to them are still there with me every time I cube up my beloved summer watermelon.

See you tomorrow, FOAS.