Peach Juice Stains

Family traditions can be found in the smallest things

Every time her children ate a peach, my sister would issue a stern warning: “Peach juice stains.” I suppose it became a habit, continued without much thought, just a certain instinctive maternal caution. A lifetime of this kind of repetition is amusing only in retrospect, however, and finally my niece, having heard the line one time too many announced with the inimitable tone of teenage disdain: “Mom. I am seventeen years old. I know peach juice stains.”

It was a story my nephew told over cocktails, and my sister laughed, too.

Some years later, the family were gathered in my mother’s kitchen. Our lives are far-flung, so we aren’t all together very often, but it was the usual jumble of everyone in one room, talking. We had been to the farm stand and brought home peaches. Peaches are among the more unreliable fruits. Most of the time they are pithy, or hard, or just not flavorful. Good peaches are like shooting stars. You can’t plan for them, or expect them; you can only catch them when they happen. And these were exceptionally good peaches: sweet, juicy, and lush in their peachiness. We all stood over the big double sink or held wads of paper towels: my grown niece and nephew, and me, and finally, my sister, all hovering together, eating peaches.

“Be careful, Eileen,” my mother said to my fifty-something sister, who was wearing a crisp white blouse. “You know, peach juice stains.”

My mother was baffled when the family burst out laughing.

I wonder whether at some point in her life my mother was traumatized by peaches. Or, perhaps by some laundering mishap. I never thought to ask her until now, when it’s too late. Did her mother say it, too? Sometimes she would hand you a wad of paper towels, or, when I was small, make me sit down with at the table and eat my peach cut up in a dish.

I had a good peach the other day, and as the juice started to run down my chin and I blotted it away, I heard my mother’s voice in my head: “Peach juice stains.” There are good and bad ways to be remembered, but being remembered with a laugh is a nice legacy.

Peaches are among life’s great pleasures, but a good peach is a messy business, not meant to be eaten in a dish, and the juice should properly run down your arm. But wear a dark color and use a paper towel, because, well, peach juice stains.

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Autumn night at the lake

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Auggie stands by, green ball at the ready..