On the Messiness of a Mango

If it's not an apple or a banana, I don't know how to cut it.

My partner can do this thing with strawberries where she holds the peering knife and the strawberry in the same hand and thinly slices the fruit over our morning bowls of Cheerios. If I am preparing the fruit, her grandmother's german cutting board is out, stained pink in seconds, seeds dripped onto the floor where our boston terrier laps up the juice.

Because it seems like slicing fruit is always a production, I'm not particularly brave when it comes to the farmer's market or the summer produce section of the bourgie supermarket.

Then, last week, I bought a mango. For a few days, it softened in my fruit bowl as I glanced at it, occasionally poking it with the round end of a spoon. I was intimidated. I wondered if I even had the right kind of knife. I wondered why its skin felt so tough. I wondered how that oval fruit became the earthy lassi that goes so well with paneer.

I worked around the mango each morning, circling it in my morning coffee routine.

Then the time came. As I poked the mango with my spoon, I felt a reverberated squish (do squishes reverberate????) I readied my cutting board, the weathered wood in need of a new coat of vegetable oil,   my dependable cerated knife freshly rinsed of yesterday's peanutbutter.

As I cut into the skin, attempting to peel, juice welled into my palm. The skin, like leather, a sticky, solid pile of debris. I shoo the cat away.

Skinless, I cut slices of fruit into a mixing bowl.

The pit is larger than I anticipated. I think there must be more fruti I can get off.

I lift the pit and bite, juice streaming down my chin.

As I wipe my face with the kitchen cloth and reach for my coffee, I think, this messiness is exactly what summer is about.