I'm watching the freezing drizzle fall on the dead brown grass and I want coconut water. I want to drink it from a green coconut that is still warm from the sun. At 12 years old I could whip a machete with surprising accuracy across the sweet spot of the coconut to expose the fountain of youth inside.
Drinking that slightly sweet nutty water made me feel invincible. Nothing I know quenches the thirst better. I think part of the satisfaction of a good swallow of coconut water is how hard you have to work to get it. Coconut trees don't yield their green nuts easily. If you manage to make it up the trunk and actually grab one you have to spin it around a hundred times before it twists off. ( I know I could have taken the machete to hack them off but I wasn't allowed to wield a machete to the state park where all the good coconut trees are.)
The water inside isn't the best part. The spoonme is. Clinging inside the shell of a green coconut is the soft creamy, flesh that tastes like coconut custard. You scrape it out with a spoon. It is what I believe angles to dine on in heaven. It is a sweet and yummy as a baby kiss. In fact, it is often the first food a Hawaiian mother feeds her infant, it is so nutritious.
I want that right now. I want to taste my childhood in the Hawaiian islands. I want run bare footed with a green coconut under each arm across the seawall all the way back home.
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