Figs & Coffee

I stopped in at my favorite cafe this afternoon and noticed the owner picking something from the tree that grows in the front courtyard. I had forgotten that it's a fig tree. We chatted about how good those things taste, and she suggested I pick as many as I like because she has more there and at her home than she knows what to do with. She was not in the least interested in selling them alongside the coffee and wraps.

I fetched a ladder and I guess I might have picked 40 or 50 ripe figs, which taste quite wonderful and are not a part 0f the everyday American diet. I was in my late twenties and making my first adventure in Europe when I first ate one that was fresh, as opposed to dried and packed on a string. It was very shortly after my arrival in Rome in 1985 and a thing that dreams are made of, buying a bag from a street vendor and eating them by the the Flaminian Gate. I giggled like a baby because it was sheer delight and discovery for me; something I was not thinking of --and there they were.

I offered the figs to everyone at the cafe and almost all ate, sometimes the first fresh fig for them. It was like re-living that tiny, delicious memory. Several people had those same minutes of joy.

What a wonderful surprise this was!