Since childhood, and cane before sugar

chewing on these, extracting their juice, is much more about the memory than about my current understanding of joyful eating

Memories can be more true to perception than to the actual event referencing the memory. Today I used a memory as a shield of honor.

While I can not refer to my father as having been an intellectual, he strived for a formal higher education, and certainly for higher understanding towards a social, spiritual, godly world. All the while, stopping on the side of the road, he would bring out the machete out of the trunk of the car, to harvest a few canes of sugar (cañas). Without taking his necktie off, he held the cane horizontally with his left hand, rotating it rhythmically while accurately striking it with the machete on his right, masterfully stripping the peel off, before splitting the sticks in four parts to enable an easier chewing.

Perhaps the hardest contrast to what I witnessed today at the farm, was observing the lady resting the cane vertically on the ground, eliminating the balancing act I observed from my father.

In traveling, there is a great difference between witnessing a lifestyle for the first time, and seeing a different version or context of what one once knew, and deeply absorbed as such.

A large family hosting me, represented in three generations, was keen on informing a man from New York City about fruits on a farm, how to handle them, their names, and how to eat them. At some point, a centimeter of pride or retaliation sparked through my lips:

“my father was from the country”