This means something

When I was little, life's beauty was in the small surprises. An afternoon tangerine split open and shared with my mom became something special when we found a baby tangerine growing inside the juicy, golden flesh of the fruit. An egg cracked for a birthday cake became a conundrum when two yolks slid like bright golden suns into the yellow bowl we always used for cake batter. Had we just doubled the egg content somehow, with nature's twist, or would it matter that there were two yolks?

Mom and I have never been close, at least not in my memory, although I'm sure she could tell you of a time as an infant when I enjoyed her company. As a psychologist, she's given me enough unwanted advice over the years for me to edit the DSM-IV, and I always feel like she just wants to be my friend, until I tell her the graphic details of my life that I'd share with a friend. Then she's my counselor again.

Funny, I can take that from my friends, who try to help me figure shit out, but not her. Another one of nature's great mysteries.

Anyway, today as I was dicing an onion and a red pepper for some pineapple salsa, I came across something that totally reminded me of her. And it wasn't onion tears.

My red pepper, when split in two, had a little baby green pepper nestled up inside the humped crest of its top, right near the stem. It's not unususal to find this sort of "mutant" fruit in nature, and like I said, it always makes me smile and think of my mom in a good way when I do. Mutants= mom thoughts maybe not the nicest of ideas, but that's not quite the correlation.

So I finish seeding the pepper, separate the stem, and pull off the little nubby of green pepper poking out from under the crisp red flesh. Lo and behold... there's a YELLOW pepper growing around the little green bit of pepper. This thing just keeps getting better and better. And the best thing of all... the symmetry of it. Each side of the red pepper had this sort of genetic extra growing on it.

When I was little, a dumb six-year-old, you know, mom would tell me that there was some special meaning in this additional fruit or egg yolk or whatever, and I'd believe her.

Now, I'm hardly a dumb child anymore, but when I find this sort of thing on my own as an adult, I think of those special rare moments with my mom, and today, finding this trio of peppers in part of my dinner made me smile. I took pictures (obviously) of the thing, and then yes, I ate the little guys.

Those cakes never differed with an extra yolk, and the tangerines were never sweeter, but as we ate the cake later on, it was like we had a little shared secret tucked inside only for us to know. Today's yellow pepper was sweet ( yellow peppers are my favorite anyway) and the red was yummy too, but the green one, smallest of the three, was a touch bitter.Still though, that didn't matter, because as I crunched on them, I could feel the bright colors of the peppers and the bond with my mom secretly tucked away in me somewhere.