I cut up a fresh peach this morning, put it into my cereal bowl and was transported back in time sixteen years. In early August of 1992 my husband and I traveled to Houston for a week in order to take care of my best friend who was living in an apartment there while being treated for leukemia. Her husband had been there with her for many weeks, and needed a break to go home and check on the mail, their home and their dogs.

On our way to Houston we stopped in Alabama for a day or two. It was just past the end of peach season there and Mom carefully peeled one of the last of the precious fruits into our morning breakfast bowls. The flavor was indescribably wonderful, sweet and smooth, the perfect description of a hot summer day. After breakfast there was one small peach left, enough for her and Dad to share that evening over ice cream, but instead she wrapped it up in some paper towels and put it into a lunch sack for me to take on the plane to Houston. For my best friend who had been just another kid and one of the family when we were growing up. I carried that peach carefully on the plane and in the car to the chilly apartment near the hospital. And on one of her better days my friend, who barely ate anything anymore, enjoyed her own slice of a familiar summer day as she slowly savored that last peach of the year. She said it was the best thing she’d ever eaten and I relayed that message to my mother when Sallie died two months later.

This morning as I slice a peach into my breakfast bowl I remember them both, my mother and Sallie. And I remember a time when a fresh ripe peach symbolized love.