This piece first appeared a few years ago in Mary Swander’s Emerging Voices. Mary reached out to me to write a piece for her column and this is what came of the request. If you haven’t done already give Mary’s substack a follow. As the name suggests, she is a champion of up and coming writers and I’m grateful to be connected with her.
The reason why I’m sharing this here today is because the topic is fresh on my mind. I’m working on something like a companion piece to the topic. If “When to Cut Out a Watermelon’s Heart…” is a hopeful rumination on the personal than this coming follow-up piece is a scathing indictment at the factors that led us to that despair in the first place. (It’s the ‘Make it Make Sense’ YIN to the ‘Deep Dives on Identity’ YANG.) But we’ll save that anger for next week. Another reason to share this piece is because in digging up my drafts I remembered that I cut a significant amount from the published version. So let’s consider this something like a Director’s Cut or, in writer terms, the un-abridged version. Until next time. -Chuy
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My father says the only way to eat a watermelon is to cut out its heart. Crack it open and discard any of the bits even remotely close to the rind. Any of the ways that one thinks as a "normal" way to eat watermelon, the ways that I've consumed it all my life, are wrong. Into slices so one can use the rind as a handle. Cubes in a bowl. Even simply cutting one in half and going at it with a spoon is lesser than, though that’s the method I've seen my dad utilize the most. No the ONLY way to eat watermelon, he told me in a bit of incongruity that I resisted to point out, is to cut out its heart and serve to a mass of people.
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I always knew my dad had a lot of opinions regarding watermelon. So when he approached me this past summer brandishing a smirk I already knew what was coming. We were in Montana in a vacation lodge with my wife's family. For the longest time my wife and I wanted to take my family to visit hers in Montana. After being sequestered by the last two years of the Pandemic, after lock downs, quarantines, and canceled travels, we thought it was as good a time as any to embark on the multi-day drive. It was on the last day of our stay, in a modern lodge with metal walls and an open floor plan, when my dad came up to me with a question.
"Y tu eres que escogio la sandia?" he asked.
"Por si- yeah I picked it. Porque?" I asked even though I knew the answer. I didn't let him respond. "It's not good huh? I thought it would be."
He laughed. "No. It's not good. I know you picked it out because it's no good."
"Yeah yeah," is all I could muster as I let out an eye roll and did a little shrug. I half wanted to defend myself. To explain how long I dug through the box of watermelons at the small town grocery store that morning. How I had taken a photo of a sign at my local Trader Joes earlier that summer. Than sign detailing the steps you need to take to find the absolute perfect melon from the bunch. Pronounced yellow spot. Distinct webbing. Things like that. I referenced the photo on my phone in one hand while I batted away the melons that didn't fit the bill with the others. Finally I landed on one that fit the most criteria, putting my phone in my pocket to lift my prize with both hands. I, of course, did not tell my dad any of this for fear of more ribbing.
My dad and I grew closer these last few years. I'll credit it to two main reasons. The first is I wrote fairly candidly about our relationship in my memoir, released around this time last year. It's weird to write about people you know, people still in your life who you have ongoing and dynamic relationships with. When I wrote about my dad I packaged it like an arc where we didn't connect and started to do so by the time of my writing. But real life is different than the words you commit to a page. It's more complicated. You have to relearn lessons and regress into mistakes you've already made. For a bit after the book I felt like a fraud. Like I wasn't keeping my end of the bargain when it came to my family. When it came to my dad. Then the other reason for us getting closer materialized.
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The Pandemic was many things. For me it felt like a behemoth that contradicted itself at every turn. It was a slow moving disaster. One that you could see coming, like a slasher villain lumbering toward you. But at the same time it was blindingly fast. I felt that speed when my parents told me they caught COVID. One answered phone, like a shotgun blast. My mom told me while I was driving...I pulled into the parking lot and held back tears when she told me my dad had gotten it bad.
A behemoth of contradiction. Without rhyme or reason. Or a reason that humanity couldn't parse out at the time. Why did some people get it and were barely affected? While it consumed others that were healthier, younger, more careful?
At the time I had a cushy job with the University. We were able to work from home when it first broke out. We scrambled to figure out zoom for our first virtual all staff meeting. "How have folks been coping?" one zoom square asked the others. "You know. It's hard. I felt like I've binge watched all the shows already!" Another replied to a chorus of tinny laughs from my laptop speakers. In my head I thought. We're worried about this when I'm afraid this fucking factory is going to consume my dad.
That was the worst piece of it. My dad got covid from his work. A meat processing factory that stayed running for the majority of the pandemic. It was deemed essential work. To process turkey so Subway could have meat for its sandwiches. The plant jammed a swab in my dad's nose and sent him home on Friday. An automated call greeted him Sunday evening telling him two things. That his results were negative. And that they expected him at 5am the next morning. Never-mind that he could barely move. Or that the rest of my family were quarantined with their own positive results. (After I personally made a stink, calling up the Iowa Department of Health, the factory called my parents to inform them that, “No actually his results were positive.” As if they re-tested or it’s like strep where they have to wait for clearer results. By this time I was tired enough to refrain from telling them it doesn’t work like that.)
My mom told me all this on Monday morning. My dad couldn't go in even if he wanted to. He would stand up from his recliner to pick up the phone, only to steady himself against the wall after a few steps, breathless. It wasn't until the following summer, after some time separated her from his words, when my mom revealed something my dad told her. "We're going to die from this. In this house. Alone."
Words cannot convey how grateful I am that he was wrong. That the contradictory behemoth spared my father. I will never find the words that can convey how angry I was at the plant for that automated phone call. At tenets of our society that abandoned or exploited us during these last few years. I had family members in the plant west of us in Iowa. Where supervisors had a betting pool on which of their workers would get COVID first. When my mom called me that Monday morning I felt alone. By that time it was 4 months and counting in isolation. My parents were upset that my wife and I declined to visit during the holidays. It felt inevitable. The way we tried to sequester but it still rocked my family the way it did.
Which brings me back to our summer in Montana, and the actual last day of our stay. When my dad brandished a watermelon he had acquired that morning. He picked it out with a method he has yet to reveal to me. He put the sandia on the counter and told me about the only way to eat it. Folks circled my dad, shoulder to shoulder, necks craned from behind the huddle as he took out a pocket knife. After wiping the blade on his shirt he cut into la sandia, taking care not to plunge the knife fully into the fruit. "No mas como 3 inches." He said as he repeated the cuts across the top hemisphere of the rind. He jostled and cracked off the slices. What was left was a picture of a watermelon I hadn’t seen before. It looked like a heart, red and exposed from the pieces my dad ripped from it. He looked over at me in a dramatic pause, holding a ragged slice before chucking it into a nearby bin.
"Wait, you just throw away the rest of it?" someone asked.
"Si. Is no good. That's how we eat it. In Mexico we only eat when we have lots of melons. When we have lots of people."
My father cradled the bottom of the sandia in his arms as he cut off pieces for the crowd. We grabbed them with our bare hands. To eat quick before the juices ran down our arms onto the floor. My dad smiled as others in the lodge clambered over to get a piece for themselves. Kids snaked through the legs of adults and held up grubby hands to get their own piece. It was one of the best watermelons I've tasted. After all, it's the only way to eat it.