The Watermelon in the Pool

Summer, I’ve realized, has a lot of ‘iconic’ foods. At least for me. Whether it’s steak on the grill with asparagus and pasta salad, eating outside with the family with music in the background and the insects buzzing, humidity ripe in the air and sticky. Or homemade pizza with everyone laughing in the kitchen, flour everywhere and toppings, oftentimes serving as snacks, conversations flowing easily except for the few arguments about if ‘pineapples really belong on pizza’. Or even hamburgers and turkey burgers at a friend’s house, fingers wrinkled from the pool with bees and wasps buzzing nearby and a dog watching you closely telepathically telling you to drop just one bite more.

Those are all iconic summer foods and memories that belong alongside them. They’re meals that were enjoyed nearly every summer in the comfort of friends and family and deep southern heat. But there’s one meal – or rather intermediate snacking turned into a meal – that will always hold a place in my heart as The Most Iconic.

Let me set the stage for you, because the memories involved in these foods are what make them really sing. It’s July, a few days before the fourth of July, not that you can tell. There are red, white, and blue little flags and streamers everywhere. Everyone is wearing some mix of the three, my little sister with her wispy blonde hair has two red, white, and blue bows holding up her pigtails.

The location is a backyard, technically, but when you’re young, like I was it seems huge, like a forest, an adventure, never-ending. There’s a brick house with a back door, low to the ground and surrounded by ivy, which, in the early hours of the dawn, you find out are morning glories. The grass is green and vibrant, no stickers or spikes to be seen or felt, and finally there is a pool, a large pool with sharp edges and clear water and foliage thick and abundant overhead.

The adults are gathered in iron lawn chairs talking, my sister holding onto my mother’s hand as she and my father talk to old friends. I’m in a bathing suit with the rest of the children old enough to stray from our parents’ sides. My bathing suit probably has a frog on it, it changes color when it gets wet and was singularly my favorite article of clothing until I couldn’t fit in it anymore.

The water in the pool is like ice but in the July sun, it’s almost a blessing. The insects, it seems, have been chased away by the party, the humidity, in all its summer glory, has not.

Us kids have been swimming for a while now, or at least it feels like it. We’re starting to get restless, antsy, we want to go and explore, find new things, new adventures, but it isn’t time yet. So, Pop-Pop brings out The Watermelon. Now the watermelon is nothing really special if you look at it from an adult point-of-view. It’s green, as a watermelon should be, and long, heavy, and rotund, very watermelon-like. But to us kids it was a gold-mine. Because the watermelon was not for eating, not yet at least, and the watermelon didn’t go on the table. The watermelon went in the pool. The ice-cold pool was perfect for keeping watermelon and Pop-pop always said letting us play around with it always made it more juicy and sweeter. I never asked if this was really true, too caught up in the moment, but I feel certain now that the watermelon was made sweeter by the memories it helped make rather than any watermelon abuse on our part.

The watermelon was a favorite summer playmate in the pool. We would see if it could float with one of us on top of it, how fast we could spin it and, in some cases, would lob it to see how far each of us could go. This was always accompanied with a stern reminder to be careful as watermelon lobbing wasn’t exactly the safest sport to take part in. We never lost a watermelon though, so I do believe that counts for something.

Our watermelon games keep us occupied for hours and when we are well and truly worn out this time, not just itching to find something new, Pop-pop fishes the watermelon out of the pool with the help of a reliable cousin. It’s split into pieces and handed out rapidly to the swarm of children suddenly pressing close, water dripping everywhere with hungry and excited eyes and reaching fingers.

Everyone got a slice and was silent… for now. The watermelon was juicy, very much so from our aggressive attentions, and sticky. It didn’t take long for everyone to finish it off, licking fingers and chattering to Pop-pop about our adventures. Once we were finished, it was time to move.

I’m not sure how the adults got to the new location, probably in something as boring as a car. But the reliable cousin, who was one of the tallest people I’d ever seen, and Pop-pop loaded all the kids into the most outdoorsy version of a golfcart that I can comprehend. From there it’s a wild ride over hills and plains, creeks and bamboo forests, old cars, and finally the lake. Or, now I realize, a pond but in my youth it looked enormous. Stretching forever and oh so deep. They let us all out, the adults have beaten us there, by some magic, and there’s food on the tables of the little wooden house. We’re given hamburgers on paper plates with French fries and slaw and corn on the cob.

We eat ravenously before we’re set loose again. This time grabbing canoes and, in the insistence of the adults, life jackets. Some adults, like my father, are roped into helping us carry the canoe out to the water, imparting boat wisdom to young ears too excited to really listen properly. Paddles rake the water clumsily and we laugh and laugh and laugh as we boat around feeling like accomplished sailors and victorious pirates. Until, of course, we flip ourselves over and bob around like unhelpful buoy’s trying our best to flip our boats back over. (It rarely worked but we had fun regardless.)

Once our boating adventures had been exhausted, we were often called back into the lake house for sweets. Sometimes there was cake and other times cookies, but by far the best times were when Mombe, Pop-pops wife, made homemade ice cream. Often vanilla with peaches, in small paper bowls, cold and clumpy and sticky. Mombe always made quite a lot, wisely, for excited children with ample sweet tooths.

Once finished, we were back out again. This time swimming and diving deep to rummage around the bottom for lake clay. Our parents were never really as proud of our lake-earned treasures as we were, though that was often because we tried to give them handfuls of clay and debris to ‘keep’.

The sun is setting soon and our reliable cousin, brings out a guitar. We’ve exhausted our relentless energy at this point and have gathered close to watch. He plays songs I don’t remember but love the tune of, he sings sometimes, and we join in. A child asks why his leg is different than the others and he doesn’t answer but instead takes it off for us to see and mess with until our curiosity has been exhausted. Some of us slump against his sides, leg, and the couch. Other’s cuddle up with their parents. And others still stay awake, sleepy and yawning, plucking the strings of his guitar when he’s not looking, changing the tune into something silly and grinning ear to ear when they aren’t ‘caught’.

Sleepiness wears on us all and we doze and then sleep, deeply. Our parents no doubt getting us into pajamas and some kind of order before we’re all placed in a blanket pile in the living room. There’s a show about medieval knights on the TV when we wake up, though no one is sure if the adults kept it on in case someone woke up confused or if they turned it on when they got up.

We wake up slowly and in waves, making out way into the kitchen where Mombe is fiddling around. Cereal is gifted out and toast, we nibble without much fanfare, still half-asleep. For those of us who are picky, like me, Mombe is kind and sneaky. The other adults are outside saying their goodbyes and finishing up conversations. My mom and sister have already gone home. So, it’s my dad that comes into the kitchen through the back door to see me with another homemade ice cream in hand, Mombe smiling benevolently to the side while she helps fix food for the others that have wandered to her side.

Sticky fingers and sweet vanilla, the sweetness of peaches. Watermelon eaten down to the rind, juicy and cool. Those will always be iconic summer foods for me.