What makes me smile

This.

This makes me smile.

Every stinkin' time.

I don't get excited about a whole lot of technology.  Most of the stuff the kids use kinda' bugs me.  But this here weirdo filter smacks a smile on my pout almost as wide as, well, Ellie's.

It's on my phone's home screen.  

It makes me giggle right out loud sometimes. 

 Out of nowhere.  

I turn on my phone and just...

well...

 look at it! 

Tell me you're not smiling!

*****

Are you a naturally happy person?  I'm not.

  I guess there is fruit that is naturally sweet and other that is just super healthy.  And then there are lemons.  And bread fruit.  Oh, and durian.  I'm not that bad (If you've never had durian, just rub your hand in your armpit and then lick it.  That, my friends, just tasted better than durian).

I'm not sour, really, or nasty.  Bland, maybe.  

One day on my mission my companion and I were walking FOR-E-VAH on a long country road in the Costa Rica heat.  Our supposed destination was much further than we had been lead to believe, and this was back in the day before everyone carried a designer rain barrel full of water everywhere.  

We were parched!  No, way more dry than that.  Crazy dry.  Sahara-mirage-in-the-dessert dry.  Just before the hallucinations set in, we saw a grove of huge trees hanging with some sort of giant citrus fruit.  They were a glowing yellow, and as big as a grapefruit.  We didn't know what they were, and we didn't care.  We ran to the trees and grabbed a low-hanging potential-water-bomb.

I ripped into the flesh with my nails and was blasted by the most intense lemon smell I'd ever experienced.  My dry mouth pointlessly tried watering, but those weird "sour sensors" in the back of my jaw, you know, the ones that make you cringe when you see a baby suck on a pickle (the ones that are tingling right now as you read this), wouldn't give my throat the satisfaction.  I paused, wondering if I could possibly get through the face-punch of acid that was about to come, all for the sake of moisture.  My desperate fingers found the pith to be about an inch thick, and after a struggle, I finally held a much smaller orb of the palest yellow in my hand.  

My eyes watered at the Pledge-like aroma as I pulled off a translucent wedge, and both bravely and desperately, popped it into my mouth, bracing myself for the explosion of eye-squinting and shuddering.

Nothing.

Well, almost nothing.  The slightly dry membrane held what could be likened to very, very watered-down, warm lemonade.  It was so simple and bland that it was perplexing.  My sensory system felt lied to.  Either my nose was broken or my tongue was. 

But otherwise, it sort of did it's job.  Attacking the tree, we downed 3 or 4 apiece, and though we didn't feel quenched, we were held over till we finally reached the next house on the eternal road.  As still-thirsty young missionaries, we were bold, of course, and fearlessly knocked on the ancient wooden door. 

A squat little woman with a bowlegged walk and a dear smile met us at the door.  She wore a print skirt and a different print blouse.  A towel-turned-apron held on for dear life around her plump middle, and exhausted, dusty flats clung to her feet, her ashy, foot skin bulging in complaint. We skipped right over our usual introductions, and asked very frankly, "Pardon, Senora, could you please gift us some water?"  (Yes, that is how you say it in Costa Rica.  Isn't that lovely?).  Her surprise at seeing two American girls a foot taller than she on her porch, with no other motive but thirst, called out the old mother in her, and she did what all good mothers do; she took us to her kitchen.

We sat in a cool-ish, red tile-floored, whitewashed kitchen at a large, plank table, very unlike any place I had seen in my 5 months in the country.  We were presented with two mismatched glasses of, ironically, lemonade.  Sweet and tart, it teased us for having enjoyed the bland water balls in the orchard.  A painfully thin old fellow sat quietly on a chair near the stove, his sun-faded clothes drapped loosely on his leathered skin, and listened as we visited with the little old mother.

And that is all I remember.

All but one thing... we told her of our impromptu harvest (and apologized for taking fruit from what we learned were her trees), and shared our confusion over the strange fruit.

"Limon Dulce!" she told us... sweet lemon.  That's what we had eaten.

The name seemed oddly wrong, but yes, I guess they had been sweet... ever so slightly.  I was just glad I hadn't known the name before tasting them.

*****

So I guess bland isn't a terrible thing.  It's a beginning point, at least.  I'd love to be a cheery strawberry, bright and bold.  Who doesn't smile when they see a strawberry?  Or a peach, just pushing it's way to the front of the happy little fruit parade with is kitten fuzz and it's humorous booty.  You can't have a peach-juice-dripping chin and take yourself too seriously.  Even the banana, though bordering on silly, seems like the comedian of fruit.  It's even shaped like a smile.  But alas, though it will never shine from a well lit stack in a grocery store, a limon dulce will bring comfort in it's own weird, neither particularly spectacular nor disappointing way.  It does the job, though it might need encouragement to bring out a smile.

Encouragement... 

like that funny face

 at the top of the page.