I love figs.

I love figs.  I love them like the smell of a newborn baby.  I love their gravid weight, I love the way they become unabashedly vulnerable in their moment of ripeness.  I love the way figs open up to reveal a world of alien sweet tendrils, I love the wonderful shapelessness of their crushability, the way my little son, wide eyed, can pull the open purpley wonder of a fig into the impossible smallness of his mouth with the fluid possibility of a sea creature vanishing into a cave.

I love that my mother asked my father to plant a fig tree, as he recovered from the heart attack, so that every year the tree grew bigger and stronger she could see in it the life they had that they could so easily have missed.  I love that this tropical tree growing way up in the northwest in the fourth corner of the country where it has no business produces enormous, succulent figs.  I love that I never knew my mother loved figs, and loved the same figs I love best, the new leaf green figs as purple inside as a flower, until she asked for the tree.  I love that my son has been watching us devour figs all week and has refused to have anything so suspiciously green enter his mouth until the last hour of the last day of this visit, when he asked for one last walk outside and then devoured one, two, three side by side with me.  I love that there are figs that were unripe this morning, unripe at midday, unripe when my father made his rounds and when the neighbors came to pick, that are ripe now in the last hour after sunset for my small son to discover again what he learned last year, and the year before that-- figs are good.