The Fruits of Yesterday and Today, Essay Example

Fruits are very good for the body; they can provide many different nutritional benefits to help keep our bodies clean and healthy.  When I was little, my mother used to buy many different kinds of fruits to create such amazing meals, drinks, and desserts. Unfortunately, as we grow older there are some things that we tend to lose; and the wonderful, luscious fruits of my youth have been lost.  The fruits that I enjoy today are very few and far between, and none of them taste anywhere near as amazing as those that I had the pleasure of tasting during my younger years.

When I was younger, times were much different.  My parents had not yet divorced, so we all lived together.  My mother still made my brother and I breakfast every morning, and we always had some amazing new fruit snack to accompany the meals. Bananas, oranges, pineapple, and especially strawberries – these were the fruits that we grew accustomed to.  My favorite drink was the incredible fruit smoothies that my mother would blend together.  The drinks tasted so sweet and smooth as they entered my mouth.  I would always smell the drinks just before drinking them because my mouth would start to water from the sweet smell of the pineapple, oranges and strawberries.

My favorite part was when the smooth liquid would hit my palate and fulfill my oral urges to taste the special drinks.  Although everything had been blended together, I could still taste the tartness of the pineapples.  My mother was famous in our home for picking strawberries that were very fresh, and when I bit into them, my mouth would pucker up in such a way that it would make me beg for more.  I could never stop with just one strawberry; it was by far my favorite fruit as a young child.  I used to hope that family gatherings and my friends’ parties would have a small bowl of strawberries for me to feast on.  They tasted so much better than anything else I ever had that they could have been sitting right next to the best candy dishes on the planet, and I still would have to eat the strawberries first.  You could almost say that I was addicted!

The joy of touching the strawberries was the first pleasure.  The soft texture of the fruit satisfied my fingers.  I would sometimes take a look at every piece of the fruit.  The green stems were as green as the grass on a baseball field, the way every inch of it looks like it has just grown from the perfect seed.  The redness of the fruit was my favorite, always bright red with the little seeds planted ever so carefully on the sea of red skin.  I always found it fascinating that no strawberry tasted the same.  Big ones.  Small ones.  Even the misshaped fruits that looked like they were the last ones picked at a dodge ball game tasted even better.  They looked odd on the outside, but on the inside they contained a taste that would make the tongue beg for more.

All of this changed when my parents divorced.  My mother moved out of the home and I stayed with my dad, who never bought fruits unless they came from a can.  One time I begged him to buy fruit the next time he went to the grocery store; which he did, but he bought a nasty, dull watermelon that never satisfied my urge for the tasty, cold, delectable strawberries.  It never was the same after the divorce.  My mother would make the smoothies when I would come over to visit, but I think that perhaps the divorce took a little of her innocence out of her that gave her the ability to make such wonderful drinks.

Today, I still strongly desire strawberries, but I think that it is for a much different reason.  As the strawberries touch my tongue, they fill my mouth with a joy that they never could when I was a young child.  Sure, they still have the same sweetness, but they are not nearly as tart as they once were.  Instead, they are juicier and do not cause my mouth to pucker as tightly as when I was little, so I can keep the fruit in my mouth just a fraction of a second more to enjoy the taste a little longer.  The idea of eating strawberries is addictive to me, although I rarely satisfy my addiction by buying fruit at the grocery store.  Whenever I am able to eat a strawberry, I receive pleasures in my mouth, but also the reminiscent pleasures of the joys of my youth.  Nothing will ever be the same as the time before the divorce, but I will always remember the taste of those strawberries and the deliciousness of the smoothies that would accompany almost every breakfast meal.