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The First Taste
I must have been very young. Young enough that the memory has no sharp edges, only impressions.
I remember sitting somewhere warm. There was light—real light, not the filtered kind that comes through windows. Maybe a porch. Maybe a backyard. Maybe a place that no longer exists.
Someone peeled the fruit for me.
That part stands out. The act of peeling felt deliberate, careful, as though the fruit required patience and respect. I remember the peel coming away in sections, the sound soft and fibrous. I remember juice on their hands.
When they handed it to me, it didn’t look like the fruits I already knew. Not an apple. Not an orange. Not a banana.
I bit into it and felt confused—in the best way.
It was sweet, but not sugary. Soft, but not mushy. There was a faint floral note, something almost perfumed, and underneath it a brightness that made my mouth water.
I remember thinking, in the simple way children think: This tastes like something special.
The Disappearing Fruit
What haunts me most is not the flavor—it’s how quickly the fruit vanished from my life.
I never saw it again.
It wasn’t in lunchboxes.
It wasn’t at the grocery store.
It wasn’t sliced on plates at birthday parties.
No one mentioned it. No one named it.
As I grew older, the memory receded, but it never disappeared. It would resurface at odd moments—walking past a fruit stand, catching the scent of something tropical, seeing a photograph that felt almost right but not quite.
Each time, I’d think: That’s close. But not it.
The Frustration of a Nameless Memory
Trying to remember the name of something you don’t fully understand is uniquely maddening.
I couldn’t search for it.
I couldn’t describe it well enough to ask.
I couldn’t even be sure it wasn’t a distorted memory, altered by time and imagination.
All I had were fragments:
Pale flesh
A thin, stubborn peel
A sweetness that felt gentle, not loud
A texture somewhere between firm and yielding
I’d stand in grocery stores, staring at unfamiliar fruits, hoping one would spark recognition. Sometimes my heart would jump—maybe this is it—only to fall when the taste didn’t match.
Memory, I learned, is not a reliable archivist.
The Emotional Weight of Taste
It took me years to realize that I wasn’t just chasing a fruit.
I was chasing a feeling.
Taste is one of the most powerful memory triggers we have. Unlike sights or sounds, it bypasses logic and goes straight to emotion. A single bite can collapse decades, bringing back people, places, versions of ourselves we didn’t know we’d lost.
That fruit wasn’t just delicious.
It was tied to:
Being cared for
Being surprised
Being small in a safe way
I didn’t just want to know its name. I wanted to locate myself again in that moment.
The Guessing Game
Over the years, I guessed endlessly.
Was it a mango? Too familiar.
A pear? Too grainy.
A lychee? Too floral, too slippery.
A guava? Close, but not quite.
A persimmon? Maybe—but no.
Each guess brought temporary hope and then quiet disappointment.
Friends humored me. Family shrugged.
“It was probably just a dream,” someone once said.
But dreams don’t leave that kind of residue.
Why We Obsess Over Small Mysteries
It might seem strange to fixate on something so minor. A fruit. A taste. A name.
But unresolved memories have a way of insisting on themselves. They sit quietly in the background of our lives, waiting for stillness.
I think we obsess over small mysteries because they feel solvable. Because if we can name them, we can contain them. Because remembering feels like reclaiming something that was taken without permission.
That fruit became a symbol—not of loss, exactly, but of unfinished knowing.
A Clue Appears
The closest I ever came to clarity happened unexpectedly.
I was traveling—somewhere humid, somewhere where fruit was sold casually, piled high in open-air markets. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular when I saw it.
Not the fruit itself.
The shape.
Something in my chest tightened. My body recognized it before my mind did.
I bought one.
The vendor asked if I knew how to eat it. I shook my head. They smiled and showed me how to peel it—slowly, carefully.
Just like I remembered.
I bit into it.
And for a moment, time folded.
Almost, But Not Quite
It was close. So close that it hurt.
The sweetness was there. The softness. The faint perfume. But something was off—too tangy, maybe, or not bright enough.
I finished it anyway, standing there with sticky fingers and a strange ache in my chest.
Even when you come close, memory reminds you who’s in charge.
The Fear That It Never Existed
There’s a particular kind of doubt that creeps in when you can’t confirm a memory.
What if it never existed?
What if I invented it?
What if it was a combination of things my mind stitched together?
The brain is creative. Nostalgia is selective. Childhood blurs.
But every time I tried to let it go, the memory returned—unchanged, insistent, quietly confident.
It didn’t feel fabricated.
It felt unfinished.
What We’re Really Trying to Remember
At some point, I stopped asking, What was the fruit? and started asking, Why does it matter so much?
The answer surprised me.
I think that fruit represents a time before everything was labeled, categorized, explained. A time when experiences didn’t need names to be valid.
Children don’t ask for taxonomy. They ask for sensation.
That fruit lived in a time when the world was still mysterious to me—and safe enough to be mysterious.
Remembering its name feels like trying to hold onto that version of myself.
The Search Becomes the Point
Years passed. The memory softened but didn’t fade.
And slowly, something shifted.
I realized that the search itself had become part of my life’s quiet rhythm. A small, private quest that asked nothing of me but attention.
Every unfamiliar fruit became an invitation.
Every scent, a question.
Every almost-right bite, a reminder.
The fruit didn’t need to be found to matter.
Acceptance Without Resolution
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