Day 352: 5 Minute Freewrite: Sunday - Prompt: What does a banana taste like?

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Her little boy lay on the sofa, limp and chalky pale,

but the fever had passed. If he could just have her mother’s chicken soup and orchard apples, he’d be back on his feet already. If they all could just go to the store and buy fruit and groceries the way everyone used to, in those days they all took for granted!

“Mommy.” He was fingering a piece of his quilt, the cotton print with monkeys eating bananas. How many years ago had her mom sewn baby clothes from bolts of new fabric?

“What do bananas taste like?” he asked for the hundredth time.

Sara smiled, remembering. “If there were too ripe, they tasted sickly sweet and icky. If they were too green, they were hard and icky. But if they were just right, they were good with ice cream and chocolate syrup and a cherry on top.”

His big blue eyes looked into hers, and she wished she could just transfer the memories over to him, or better yet, serve him a banana sundae.

“I have to go to work now,” she said, “but Mrs. Wedeking is here for you.”

The neighbor lady shuffled to her favorite rocking recliner, facing the boy, and sank into it with her pile of scraps. Nobody trew away old clothes too shabby for another mending; they got crocheted into rugs or patched together as quilts.

“Stay out of trouble now,” Sara said, the way her mom always said it to her, but she only wished Harry had the strength and energy to get into mischief.

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Harry watched Mrs. Wedeking

working fabric strips with her fingers and doing some kind of magic with a metal stick that had a hook on the end. The rugs she made were nice underfoot, better than the cold, hard floor. She glanced up at Harry from time to time and told him stories if he begged relentlessly, but some people didn’t like talking about the old times.

Harry turned his gaze to the big picture above the sofa, the one his dad had painted long ago for Mommy. It showed her dad on a big red tractor with a white farmhouse behind him and a woman carrying a basket of apples to the kitchen door. It looked so real, he wanted to step right into it, but Mommy always laughed. Harry had spent so much time staring at the picture, he could paint it all from memory if he just had the brushes and paints and canvas. And the magic, of course, like Mrs. Wedeking’s magic with a crochet hook, or Mommy’s magic when she found a new way to cook the same old freeze-dried food.

He knew the face of that man on the tractor, the crinkles around his eyes, the tufts of gray hair under the cap that said Naylor Seed with an ear of ripe yellow corn embroidered under it.

The man winked at him.

Harry clutched the quilt, shivering. He glanced over at Mrs. Wedeking. Her chin was touching her chest, almost, and her eyes were closed.

He sat up and gave a quick, gentle poke of the finger to the oil painting--and thought it felt soft this time. Slowly, he stood on the sofa in his bare feet and stared up at Grandpa, and Grandpa held out a hand. The hand came right out of the painting and took hold of Harry’s.

“Come on,” Grandpa said. “There’s banana bread in the oven, and chicken soup on the stove.”

Harry bunched up his muscles and sprang forward as Grandpa reeled him in to a world of soft green grass, bright blue sky, a spicy-sweet scent of autumn apples in the air-- just the way Mommy had described it to him--and other smells, more than he could take in all at once.

He took in a deep breath and tingled from head to toe. Grandpa pulled him into his arms for a great big hug, put him in his lap for a tractor ride, with Harry’s hands on the steering wheel and the engine putt-putt-putting, and off they drove around the farm and down the gravel road a ways, then back home. Everything Mommy told him about was true, and it was all even better than he had imagined.

Grandpa helped him down and walked hand in hand with him to the house. “We have a visitor,” he said.

Grandma set a basket of apples on the counter and faced them, a hand over her heart. “Little Harry!” she cried.

She fed him a bowl of her chicken soup, everything in it grown on the farm, everything tasting a million times better than he would’ve dreamed.

“Pace yourself,” Grandma said. “Too much too soon, and you’ll be sick with indigestion.”

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Time seemed to hold still while the world burst into a flurry of sights and smells, tastes and sensations. He did so many things, picking apples from a tree and feeding corn to the chickens and meeting the cows, sheep, and horses, he had to stop and take a little nap on the bed Mommy used to sleep in. He woke up to apple pie and ice cream, and banana bread still warm from the oven--with butter.

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He even tasted a banana, and Mommy was right, it was sort of sweet and sort of fruity and it coated his teeth and left a weird flavor on his tongue, but he liked it. He could see why monkeys loved bananas.

If only he could find Mommy here too, he’d never want to leave.
Grandpa stood on the front step, staring at something, then turned to face Harry. “Mrs. Wedeking is waking up, and she might die of a heart attack if she can’t find you.”

“You can see her?” Harry said.

“Oh yes. We have been watching over you all your life,” Grandpa said.

“You were very very sick, young man, or we might not have been able to bring you here today,” Grandma added. “We would love to have you here every day, but we don’t ever want you to get that sick again.”

Harry felt a big lump in his throat and his eyes went blurry, but he didn’t cry.

Grandma stood outside the kitchen door, holding a basket of apples. Grandpa walked back with him to the tractor.

Something shiny in the grass caught Harry’s eye. He bent over and picked up a little bracelet with a silver heart. “This is Mommy’s!” he cried out. “She looked and looked and never found it--but I found it!”

Grandpa patted him on the back. “She’ll be so happy to see it again.”

Harry slipped it into his pocket. “Thanks for everything,” he said, but he couldn’t get another word past the lump in his throat. He just smiled and waved. And wondered how he was going to get home.

“It’s like climbing down a ladder,” Grandpa said, as if reading his mind. "Get on your hands and knees, drop a foot down, and feel for the sofa, and you’ll be home again.”

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“Mrs. Wedeking!”

Sara cried. “What in the world happened today?”

The old woman sat up straight, blinking, as Harry bounced up and down on the sofa. His cheek were rosy, his eyes shining. And his feet were oddly stained with dirt.

“Harry! You look healthy as a horse!” Sara said.

“Mommy, you won’t believe it. I tasted a banana today, and I ate Grandma’s soup, and picked apples, and--”

She laughed and wrapped him so tight in her arms, he couldn’t talk for a minute.

“You always were a dreamer,” she said.

“It wasn’t a dream.”

Sara smiled. “Whatever it was, I’m just happy to see you well again.”

Harry told her all about his day, and she marveled at how closely he’d listened to all her stories about growing up in a world he would never see. Every tiny detail, he remembered, even things she didn’t realize she had described for him.

“You’ll never guess what I found.” Harry pulled something from his pocket and handed it to her. “It was in the grass on my way to the tractor.”

The lost bracelet.

Her heart almost stopped beating, and she stared at Harry, eyes wide open, then looked up at the painting.

It had to be her imagination, but she could have sworn her dad winked at her.

Thank you, @mariannewest and @freewritehouse,

for the daily 5 minute #freewrite. To find out what freewriting is all about, go here.

Until next time,

Keangaroo

because Kean sounds like Kane (not keen, hint, hint)

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