Life These Days: Guava

It’s nearly the end of the summer, and here we are! The above photo of baby Junia is a representation of how I’ve been doing on this blog: nonsense on the white page, eyes closed to reality, hoping for the best and maybe for a pastry to mysteriously appear on the table.

Life doesn’t quite work like that (sometimes it does). We are wrapping things up here, having discovered many things late into our stay: an excellent mango shaved ice place around the corner, a casual dining dumpling shop that is now undergoing what appear to be fairly serious renovations, guavas.

Fruit seems to be expensive everywhere around the world, and the children are making their best effort to absorb mango juice into their blood streams, I was thrilled to discover (through Caleb actually) that all three kids like guava, which is one of the most inexpensive fruits here. I don’t think we’ve ever eaten in Canada before. When it comes to fruit, I feel like the kids are volume eaters, and you can get five guavas for the cost of one dragonfruit, so the ratios of consumption are about the same. They are a hard fruit to chop, though, sort of like a squash, so Caleb is in charge of chopping it up for his sisters, which is, as I’m sure you can imagine, a delight for him. He lives to serve.* At least he has mastered the chinaman squat.

Where am I? You ask. Are you not the adult capable of wielding the big knife? I am afar, insisting sadly that he cannot chop with the chopping board on his lap. Safety first: It’s all fun and games until Caleb loses a thumb.

We continue on. The days are fast and furious and very hot and also very rainy. Typhoons have neared and departed, and we are thrilled to have dried off. An Air Canada strike looms. Perhaps we need a new postcard for that.** Of course they are contemplating a strike, right at the end of our trip. Of course, it wouldn’t, it couldn’t be any other way, at any other time.

I was sort of hoping they would give us a ride home, though.

*He does not.

**Some time ago, in the midst of one of the Canada Post strikes, City TV News came by and interviewed Jon. Jon spoke passionately and intensely about the looming strike and its effects on our business, and his scruffy hair only added to the aura, so we, of course, had to take a screenshot of it and turn it into a postcard, which is one of my favourite of the dozens of postcards we’ve gotten printed over the years.