Have you read Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl"? For some reason I keep thinking of it while reading your drabbles.

ita has a habit of making me wonder whether I colour my memories of the Caribbean too highly.

She also has the habit of answering the question for me. No. I don't.

Brava, love. Those are wonderful.

Ah, those are amazing, ita.

I'm going to have to think about this one. Nothing's happening yet. Maybe tomorrow.

ita. I can smell the salt in the air and feel the sweet juice drying sticky on my skin. Lovely.

God knows they'd tried. The best preschools, the best schools. Enrollment in an ivy league university as soon as the ultrasound confirmed the sex.

Her own room, shell pink with icing-white woodwork, an antique crib and matching low chest. They'd had a custom pad made to turn the chest into a changing table, the crib bars reset to conform to modern standards. Later, there was an antique tester with a canopy, an Aubusson, couturier clothes, tasteful jewelry.

The product of their love, their plans, their hopes faced them now, hair dyed blue, nose pierced, belly bulging round as a melon.

We were never sure what they were. Blackberries? Black raspberries? Daddy remembered the bush from when he was a boy in the 1920s, growing next to the old barn's wagon door. Linda, being taller, got the top of the bush. I, being littlest, got the middle. It was her idea to get berries for baking. Or for dinner. Something. Maybe she knew as well as I that the berries would never reach the house.

Purple tasted sweet and wonderful, until you found a perfect black one. Flavors hiding behind the sweet. When I first tasted wine a decade later, I remembered.

(fruit. I could go on forever)

My mother mastered a delicious apple pie during my childhood in Jamaica. Always critical of her talents, she tried to downplay the pastry. But it flaked, and was buttery, all the things I demand of a crust to this day. The juicy, tender filling was why you came to the table, though. Tart, sweet, with just enough resistance to your bite.

It took me years to find an apple pie made with real apples that could compete with her juice soaked chayote concoction.

So often the fables we spin of the first world grow harsh and thin in direct light.

My god, ita. You're just all about the sensory, aren't you? Your drabbles bring it, scent and the quality of light, the weight of sun on the skin, dust on a child's bare feet. They're marvelous.

connie, yours about the berries...about the ripe one after the others.

You're all making me hungry.

wrod...

Deb, insent.

Backsent, bebe. I'll curl up with it later today, if that's OK. I do have some suggestions for trimming, largely stylistic.