A volunteer passion fruit twines up an old swing set. I have a faint memory of watching my father install the set. My bones remember moving through the air, up and up, jumping off to land near the long gone bottle brush tree. Those brief moments flying through the air. The slight jarring of land and bruise. On a swing, one imagines what it is to fly. The metal chains that held up the seats are still good, but the wooden seats had weathered into unsafe and unusable, or so I told myself as I had it hauled into the garden, and insisted I could grow tomatoes along the chains that once held up the seats. The tomatoes failed to take. But the beans are reliable. And volunteer plants grow.
A volunteer passion fruit twines up an old swing set. An uncle used to grow passion fruits. Visits to his home would always end with a gift of passion fruits to carry home, and for days, the tastes of gel and sweet and sour and seed would flavor the house. I do not remember mixing it with anything, not sour milk, not yogurt, not ice cream, not fruit salads. The slight pressure of a fingernail popping open a fruit. The scoop of a finger to remove all the pulp and juice. Orange-yellow stains on the white formica in the kitchen. And repeat.
Certain foods are associated with visits. Did we buy passion fruits when life made it more difficult to visit this uncle? I forget. If we did, did they taste the same? I also forget. Perhaps I mean to say that what did not come from his house was forgettable, unmarked by all the ways visits infuse gifts with flavor. A fruit can be infused with hospitality.
I laugh that I’m now at the age when I say that fruits no longer taste as they did when I was younger. A friend and I ordered a dessert with passion fruit, and I could not stand the taste. The fruit, frozen, felt gloopy. It tasted no better when it thawed. Yet another dessert with passion fruit looked better than it tasted. I wondered if I had lost the taste for the fruit. I am afraid to buy it from the market, to try it fresh. I worry, now, that what I experience might taint what my memories bear. We laugh, now, that flavors we once enjoyed no longer bring pleasure. We age into different flavors.
A volunteer passion fruit twines up an old swing set. It has been there for several years. Until this year, I let it sprawl and then cut it back. This year, I am training it up the swing set, moving it along so I still have space to grow beans. Moving it along so the volunteer dahlia, now there for several years, can also grow. Volunteer nasturtiums grow in that bed. Occasionally, volunteer beans. Gardeners use the term “volunteer” to name what is not deliberately placed, what survives from prior gardening seasons, the seeds and bulbs that form and return. What persists. What surprises.
I do not know when or if the volunteer passion fruit will bear fruit. I wait. With memories.
i) i always imagined what flying off a swing would be like. ii)I feel I too am a volunteer human. iii) one of my aunts lost the taste for stone fruit; her body decided she was allergic. I continue to grieve on her behalf. I think part of the culinary arts is reconstructing an approximation. perhaps less sugar, more tart. Yes, fresh is fresh but-
I love your writing so much. Always awakens memories. I grow up taking small stringy round mangoes into the sea and eating them with my friends. They grew wild in forests, now parking lots. Their sweet and sour taste always reminded me of passion fruit. Anyway, your piece took me back to this time, and also, no one sells stringy round mangoes. They have no value next to the big fleshy ones. Good to remember they were once a childhood pleasure.💜🙏🏾