A Bite of Yellow

   
I've never met a plum I didn't like, but the yellow are my favorites. They remind me of a Danish plum sort called reinekloder. They have the same contrast of a very tart skin and a sweet flesh - wait, that sounded a bit cannibalistic - albeit a bit more watery than the Danish variety.

These little globes of sunshine are only available for about a month every summer. I miss them in the depths of winter and start looking forward to them before the height of summer. I feel about these yellow plums the way I feel about Ontario strawberries, but the strawberries now last from June well into September.

I had a bag of four yellow plums in my fridge for while and was spacing them out, wanting to extend this part of summer for as long as I could. It's been almost a month since the season for yellow plums ended and earlier this week, I realized I need to be careful about how much slowly I eat them or they might go bad. By this morning, there were two left. Now there’s one.

I took the other out of the fridge, holding it in my left hand as I moved to the sink, the cold seeping through my skin. I rinsed it under the warm water, taking the chill of the fridge off. Watching the drops of water dew the yellow skin, stripes of ripe and more-ripe flesh visible underneath, I couldn't feel my mouth gear up for the joy that is to come. I leaned in over the sink and took the first bite.

I feel the give of skin under my teeth with its accompanying tart flavour. Past the skin, I sink into the inside of the plum and the inside sinks into me. An inside that is so ripe it is almost liquid. I take a bite and then another, the mix of the sweet mush and the almost-crunch of the tart skin making my taste buds slightly confused, but very happy. The plum is so ripe I can suck out the pit after only a few bites and then I eat the rest of it, juices dripping down my hand. It is like eating liquid sunshine.

This is happiness.