Imagine that you are a 10 year-old girl reading one of the
Chronicles of Narnia books in the shade of a huge mango tree in your backyard in the Philippines. The occasional red ant or mosquito might bother you but this book is the best one you have ever read. You are reading with such concentration that you almost don't hear someone calling you to
merienda on the porch. Merienda is usually a glass of chilled kalamansi juice but today they have slices of green mango with rock salt. You take your plate back into the shade of the mango tree and resume reading with the taste slowly savored of salt and sour green mango. So sour that it makes my mouth pucker and fill with saliva to think of the memory.
