Sharing a Watermelon with Grandpa

I've been thinking a lot about my Grandpa lately -- his birthday isn't around the corner, Father's Day last month didn't trigger it...but summer was Grandpa's time.

Memories flooded my entire apartment today as I cut up a watermelon -- memories of sitting on a 90s style lawn chair or, just as often, a 5 gallon bucket in my grandparents' back yard on Sunday afternoon, completely entranced by Grandpa cutting up the huge watermelon he'd picked from his own garden and chilled in his old ice box in the garage the day before we all arrived. We were all there with him, aunts, uncles, cousins, my own immediate family and Grandma, eventually, but not immediately. Sometimes I'd join him in the yard before all the others came out of the house. He'd "plunk" the watermelon with his large, knobby, arthritic knuckles, look at me from under his greasy ball cap and grin. He taught us all that the watermelon had to sound hollow when you plunk it; the more hollow it sounds, the more ripe it would be. And sure enough -- each time he cut a small triangle plug out of the melon to double check its ripeness, he would pull out a deep red flesh, sweet and juicy. Being the first in the yard meant that I got to eat the plug, and I was assigned to hold the other side of the wide cross section while he cut it into smaller pieces, more manageable for the little ones and those who cared about keeping the sticky juice off their cheeks. That rarely mattered to me, and it didn't matter this morning as I nibbled on my own melon while carving it up. We would pass around Grandma's salt shaker, assuring her that we weren't clogging the holes with watermelon juice. I was older than I'd care to admit before I found out many people eat melon without salt. Together the family would transform from a loud, buzzing swarm to a quietly munching group -- until the one feeling orneriest that day would start spitting the seeds, aimed specifically at someone's forehead. I don't remember Grandpa ever teaching us how to perfect our aim, but I certainly don't remember him stopping us either. Grandma, on the other hand, would get into quite a tizzy over our little watermelon seed wars.

I've been thinking of both of them off and on lately, each evening when I take my ice tea glass to the kitchen and hear him saying, "Yes, I put my cup on top the ice box -- I can just use it tomorrow, it just had tea in it, and it will again tomorrow..." and Grandma's immediate and flabbergasted response that it would be washed tonight, just as it always was. But standing there this morning, juice dripping from my wrists, my elbows, my chin, thinking the watermelon will be even better once it's chilled but unable to stop eating it, I think Grandpa was standing there with me, grinning from ear to ear.