I hadn’t had a mango since I moved to this country; I’ve bought them before, but they always went bad before I ate them. Kathy would chastise me rotten mango after rotten mango, frugality being an integral part of her very English constitution. I would apologize and say I hadn’t had a chance to eat it, and she would alternate between muttering under her breath and offering a loud grunt the next time I brought one home or - the nerve! - asked HER to buy me one when she went shopping.
Now, eating a mango is not exactly the culinary equivalent of running a marathon; it’s not a feat one must prepare for, ordinarily, so maybe her irritation was ever so slightly justified. But marriage is full of irritation, and if this is what she ends up conjuring when we eventually end up in couples therapy over my failure to consume fruit in a timely manner, I think we can all agree that she won at life.
This morning, we went shopping together - a rare occasion as it is bound to be interrupted by an emergency involving one or, exponentially worse, both of our children, which, yes, happened today - but that’s a story for another time. I spotted three different varieties of mango as soon as we got to the fruit and veggies portion of the excursion, which made the whole Market-Basket-on-Friday ordeal worth my while again (I’m more of a meat aisle kind of lady, and once rib eye, ground beef, and salmon are in the bag, I’m happy calling it a day). I waited until Kathy went looking for limes to surreptitiously sneak one into the shopping cart, and if she saw it while we were checking out, she kept her disappointment to herself.
We drove back home from Reading and, as we unpacked the car, Kathy pointed to our front yard, 98% snow-free after today’s warmth and rain, and asked whether I thought we’d get any more snow this year. And I said something I never, ever, ever, EVER thought I would say. I replied, “I hope we do.”
This statement was immediately followed by a look of horror (mine) and laughter (hers), and my dear Kathy would have been excused had she wondered whether the spirit of Adelaide Manning, original owner of 323 Grove, might have momentarily taken over her Latina wife’s body at approximately 1:30 p.m. on Friday, March 15, 2019 to speak from beyond the veil. But no, I was the one doing the speaking. I do hope we get more snow this year. I, Thais Mapstone, no longer resent New England weather.
We came into the house and put all of the groceries away - all except for the mango, which I ate with a strange mixture of reverence and childlike excitement and found to be sweet and perfect and just like the mangoes I picked in my grandfather’s orchard and at Mamal’s house, and the mangoes that fell out of mother trees and dented cars in Belém, my granddad’s hometown, with alarming regularity, and the mangoes that littered the streets of Brasilia, where I grew up.
New England is finally home.