When my daughter is home from college she likes to go to the grocery store with me. It’s something we used to do together when she still lived at home. Before Covid, I bribed her with a latte. I wanted the time to talk to her alone, away from her homework and her phone and her little brother. During Covid, a trip to the grocery store, navigating the one way arrows on the floor while avoiding other people, became the highlight of our week. Now, she is unapologetic that she likes to go because she enjoys choosing food she does not have to pay for. She plans elaborate dishes or baked goods and loads the ingredients and snacks into the cart and I gladly pay.

We bought 12 oz cups of diced watermelon for 99 cents each. In the summer, it would be foolish to buy diced watermelon. In the summer, the main quality of watermelon is refreshment. A slice provides more coldness than a pre-cut cube. In the summer, you sit on the back porch and you think of all the other slices of watermelon you have eaten. You think about being a little kid and worrying that the seed you swallowed will grow into a tree in your stomach. You think about the one party in high school where the boy you liked supposedly used a syringe to inject vodka directly into the watermelon and you couldn’t really taste it, but because it was summer and you were outside and he put his arm around your bare shoulders, you felt drunk anyway. When you eat watermelon in the summer you think about your own kids with juice dripping down their arms, feeding the rinds to the dog even when you tell them not to. A slice of watermelon in the summer tastes like possibility.

But watermelon in the winter is better in cubes. It is too sweet and too cold to eat an entire slice of watermelon in the winter. No one wants to roll up their sleeves and grab hold. Watermelon in the winter is like the dream you have where you sit and talk to your friend. At first, the conversation is completely normal. Then, you start to notice that it seems not quite right. You feel so happy that the amount of happiness doesn’t seem to fit the ordinariness of the conversation. Then you realize it’s because the friend is not supposed to be there. You know he died years ago and the chance to talk to him is not quite right, but you enjoy it anyway. You should feel sad, but instead there’s a sweetness that you didn’t expect.

Lately, so many things seem to be on the verge of slipping through my fingers. I have an urge to grasp on and hold tight, to try and wring every bit of juice from every moment with my children, with my parents, with this phase of my life. But watermelon in winter is its own thing, it is harder to hold on to but sweeter because of that.