Please post the link to your blog's weekly Slice of Life in the comments of this post.
Remember, you may also complete the Slice of Life on Schoology.com.
Please post the link to your blog's weekly Slice of Life in the comments of this post. Remember, you may also complete the Slice of Life on Schoology.com. "Don't forget to try new things." This is cantaloupe, and an artist's rendering of cantaloupe. Two artists' renderings of cantaloupe, to be more exact. One in 35mm and another in palm-sized porcelain. Today's message is two-fold, as well. You see, the larger, juicer, ice-chilled melon is my first cantaloupe, which I tasted, savored, enjoyed, relished - and snapped a picture of - while eating dinner with my beloved Aunt Jo on the Champs Elysees as L'arc de Triomphe was slowly silhouetted by the setting sun. And being me, when I am getting to know someone, getting to trust someone, sharing my pictures with them is pulling back the curtain of my introvert self. Like the way novels told in verse let us hear the characters' secrets, my photo albums and the accompanying commentary tell my stories of people, places of home, foreign adventures abroad and in new cities, and the aesthetic that gets tucked inside - a filmstrip of memories, or a filing cabinet of consciousness, or individual beads strung together or like last week's assessment of Christmas ornaments as evergreen-hanging memories and tokens, all coming together to make a bigger meaning. And I shared this album of snapshots of family, my brother, our barn, my nieces and nephews, pleasing things in Santa Fe, Paris, Boston, Mystic, Pittsburgh, etc, and someone noticed and took a slide from my filmstrip and placed it in his memory, too. You see, the smaller, firmer, delicate melon is a gift my boyfriend brought me from his week in New Orleans in June 2005, a month into our relationship. While by definition a "souvenir," this palm-sized melon and its contents are so much more than a treat, or t-shirt, or useless novelty. It is capable of saying, even now six years later, that "I see you. I get you. I want the best for you. I know you well." So well, in fact, that I didn't fully comprehend the message contained on a thin strip of paper inside until this past weekend. "DONT FORGET TO TRY NEW THINGS :-) - JON" was not a random, preachy adage, but an echo to the unexpected delight a cantaloupe brought years before we'd met, and a forecast of adventures like this weekend's twenty-plus trips down the hill sledding where we kept saying, "One more time, ok?" "No, one more time again...". When I heard my husband say, "Oh, yeah, don't forget to try new things" as he glanced at the cantaloupe box and the photo that precipitated it, it clicked that cantaloupe is not cantaloupe, or a trinket, or contrive fortune cookie-esque advice. This gift has been given over years, and, so long as I "don't forget to try new things," I hope that I will recognize the joy that is waiting to be had everywhere in life. Because, as I have been reminded, when you love someone, you help them be their best self. When you slice a good slice, you feel fuller, and more alive and appreciative in the end.
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Ms. McCullough
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