There are times when it enriches the soul to set order and tidiness aside and make a mess, and summer is one of them. Watch a kid eating ice cream or watermelon or a Popsicle and you’ll see enormous intensity and range of emotion. There’s an uninhibited presence-of-moment that arises from the complete indifference to being soaked or stained or sticky.
There was a point for each of us during childhood when food was made up of “wow’s” that had little to do with taste, and those memories lie within us now waiting to be tapped from time to time.
This week, slice up a wedge of melon and take a chomp out of the very center; eat some cherries and have a spitting contest with the seeds; pick some plums–from the farmers’ market or tree–and eat them without a paper towel in sight. If you’re around kids (and you know you will be at some point over this Fourth of July weekend), take a break from keeping them clean and make a mess right alongside them. Then notice the new–or renewed, really–perspective it brings to how you experience food.