Enough time to cut fruit

The time I felt luckiest on my trip to Hawaii was the half hour I spent puttering in the kitchen and cutting and arranging pineapple, papaya, apple banana, and cream apple.  The baby was sleeping, my husband was surfing, and my in-laws were coming over later to make us brunch.  I had finished all the chores I could think of. So I set about cutting the baby pineapple from the farmer's market, which turned out to be intensely sweet and tangy, almost excessively flavorful.  I did not neglect to sample. By comparison, the "strawberry" papaya was cool and quiet, but I liked the melting texture.  The apple banana seemed only slightly more firm and tangy than a regular banana, but the cream apple disconcerted me: milky, fibrous flesh with embedded gelatinous slivers that encased hard seeds. It didn't matter: the treat was not the taste so much as the encounter itself.  As I ate and cut and arranged layers of bright slices, I felt free, a consciousness exploring. I was alone but not lonely, working but only for pleasure. What I offered my family would be a pure gift.