The First Peach

 Los Angeles, California

When Rogers and Hammerstein famously wrote that June is Bustin' Out All Over, they were talking about the month, not someone named June. And here it is, early in June, and peaches have fully arrived in the market. Usually the first peaches are not too good. Not peachy enough and stubbornly clinging to their pits. This year, however, while the clinging part was still happening, the peach flavor was just like what I remember from high season in previous years. Very delectable and juicy. Very peachy.

Peaches are my favorite fruit. I eat them with cereal, with cottage cheese, in crisps, and out of hand. I pair them with raspberries, blackberries, and mangos. I slice them into tomato salads served with burrata cheese. But probably the best part of peaches is that, like sweet corn and melons, they herald the beginning of the summer.

We moved from Burbank to the center of the San Fernando Valley when I was twelve years old. For the next decade, I pretty much spent summers in our pool, and usually with friends. My parents would come and go on the weekends, coming back home with sweet corn from Paggi's, the stand which was on the property of San Fernando Valley State College (which later became California State University, Northridge, or CSUN). The stand was near the Little League field where the love of my life, a boy who lived across the street and three doors down, played baseball. He was my first teenaged boyfriend, a summer romance that he ended the weekend before we went back to school. I was heartbroken. I know it seems maybe a bit precious to put that word in italics. But, that first love lost is the hardest to get over. Whenever I hear the Dave Clark Five song Because, I can feel that late summer angst again in my heart.

Broken hearts aside, let's get back to the fruit. My mom and dad would wander out on the weekends, leaving us swimming or lying beside the pool, and would return home with fruit and vegetables, cold cuts from the German delicatessen or cheeses from the only Trader Joe's market in the Valley (back when Trader Joe still owned it!). Long around the early evening, my dad would fire up the barbecue and we would shower off, change into shorts and tee shirts (my favorite: Primo Fine Hawaiian Beer tee purchased during my fourteenth summer spent with my cousins in Waikiki), and play card games until dinnertime. Games that would resume after dinner and well into the night.

I think what we didn't get about those summers is that the adults were doing all the work. They were skimming the pool and laundering the pool towels. They were making snacks and meals appear as if by magic. On many of those weekend mornings, we were fed my mother's sourdough waffles, made on a waffle iron set up on the patio table. I am at a time in life where I don't want to nurse sourdough starter, much less get the waffle iron out. And for the convenience of prepared food, Trader Joe's now populate the Valley almost to the same extent as Starbuck's.

But the first peach still heralds the summer of my dreams, which I have written about here before. It is summer spent here at my home, barefoot and in candlelight. And though I no longer spend long days in the pool, I do like to swim and hang out under my patio umbrellas, listening to the sweet music from summer's past. Summer in the City by the Rascals, Boys of Summer by The Eagles. All Summer Long by The Beach Boys. Sure, there are more contemporary songs about summer, but my memories of those long-ago summers requires a more nostalgic playlist.

So here's to those summers past. And to the girl I was in cut-offs and my Primo tees. And to all we can always enjoy every single summer, like being barefoot and in candlelight. And peaches. Always, peaches.