Watermelon by Andie Kinstle Today I learned that I can’t eat watermelon without thinking of my grandmother. I see my mother, my sister, and me sitting outside at her house, at the glass table just beyond the back door, soaking in each other’s company like you would rays from the sun. I was so focused on biting the slices of watermelon all the way up until my teeth hit the green rinds that the chatter around me became the distant noise of a summer afternoon. I can’t recall how little I was, if this muddled memory is from before or after the plastic, shallow kiddie pool my grandparents would keep in their backyard became too small to hold me. I used to feel so annoyed when my mother would bring my sister and me to visit. There was too much energy bouncing inside of me to be confined to the halls of their home, and I would always feel relieved when our visits were over, and I could return my attention to the various toys I played with as a child. Most of those toys were thrown away a few years later when we moved to a different neighborhood. In August, when we would visit my grandmother where she vacationed in New Jersey, my family would cram into the bottom floor of a small apartment, my grandmother the only one with her own bedroom. When I woke up each morning, the room I shared with my sister was filled with an airy glow, the morning sun filtering in through the room’s singular window. My grandmother could usually be found outside on the front porch, sometimes drinking coffee. The weather was so warm, and I ate lunch with my family around a small wooden table almost every day until we left for home. During one of the last times I visited her, she had trash bags of clothes spread out all over the living room floor. I left her house with an ankle-length red leather jacket that I am still too scared to wear. Now, it’s only my grandfather, and he visits my house a few times a week to eat dinner and talk. We haven’t had watermelon, but the weather is warming. Maybe we will eat it in the summer.
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