Ever the country girl: By Maurine Thomas

It is indeed summertime in New York City; I go to the green grocer with anticipation to pick up my favorite fruits.  I get my nectarines, oranges, strawberries, cherries and grapes.  Then there is a slight pause when I pass by the mangoes sitting in a box waiting to be picked up; however, there is hesitation and nostalgia on my part.  My hesitation comes from not knowing what kind of “mango” I am about to purchase.  This mango does not have a name, it simply says “mango”.  My nostalgia stems from my youth as a Jamaican country girl who can pick out a mango from sight or smell.

Memories of the anticipation of summer break from school and all the mangoes I was going to eat were part of my childhood experience.  Perish the thought of purchasing mangoes when you can simply trade with your neighbor.   East Indian was by far the crème de la crème and if you got to eat an entire East Indian mango all by yourself, you definitely felt like you earned a prize.  The thought of the Common mango, Julie, Bombay, Turpentine, Black mango, just to name a few, brings me to a place of knowing that I was blessed to know what it felt like to walk barefoot if I felt like it, to climb a tree, to play hide and seek, to throw a stone and try to “lick a mango off de tree.”  The painful experience of having mango sore on the side of your mouth is all part of country life.   The memory of my grandmother’s many warnings about getting colic from eating too much.   If that was not enough to stop you from mango fever, there was the ever present knowledge of the impending “wash out” otherwise known as Benjamin’s children herb before you would go back to school.

So it is with this memory that while I will indeed purchase a “mango” before summer runs its course in New York, it is not with the same enthusiasm when someone passes by with a bucket of mango in St. Thomas, Jamaica.  I will eat this mango because the country girl in me will want to eat a mango.  However, I still yearn for my smell and taste of choices of childhood.

Ever the country girl.

Maureen Thomas