The Last Peach

Isn't it beautiful?  This is the last peach of the season from our peach tree.  I am always a little sad when I pick the last peach.  As I reach up into the branches and slowly pull down on the reddish pink fruit and feel that final "pop" as the tree lets go of the very last one, I always feel a little sad.  It signals that peach season is officially closing.  Of course, what follows at our house is the making of the last peach pie of the season, and then the time when I take the very last peach out of the fridge, peel it and eat it while letting the juices drip right into the sink.  Then that's it until the next year.  No more.  The end.  Sure, you can still get peaches at the store throughout the year.  But they taste NOTHING like a fresh peach from the tree.  NOTHING.  I've heard the same thing about bananas and mangoes, though I have never lived where those are locally grown fruits.

I think back to when I picked the first peach of the season, such an exciting time!  We LOVE peaches at our house.  It is our favorite fruit.  Every year we wait and wait and watch the peaches grow.  It seems like they will never get big enough or start to turn pink, but eventually they always do.  I usually go out and look at the peaches every day when school is about to start.  Finally one day toward the end of August I will go out and there they will be, a few peaches that finally look ripe!  The first peaches of the season.  There will only be a few at first.  I pick them when they look ripe but still feel hard.  Then we bring them in the house where I gently feel them each day until I know they are ripe.  Then I take that first peach, peel it and eat it while letting the juices drip right into the sink. There is nothing sweeter than eating that first peach of the season.  It's indescribably wonderful.  Invariably, within four to five weeks, the magic peach season ends, and I find myself standing at the sink eating the very last peach.  (Mom's rights.  I get the first and the last peach.)

I take comfort in the knowledge that peach season will come again.  I never eat that last peach thinking that I will never get to eat another peach from my tree, though that could happen if either the tree or I croaked.  I always look forward with hope to the next season.

Sometimes wonderful seasons of life end too.  Babies grow up, special vacations or family moments come and go, jobs come and go, friends move away.  Sad? yes.  Is it the end of the world?  No.  (But sometimes it feels like it.)  Just like with peach season, you have to have hope that another wonderful season will come.  In the meantime, enjoy and savor those special moments and people you do have.  Enjoy them to the very last drop.