I walked into the kitchen and saw one banana pulled apart from the bunch … set aside and ripening.

Smiled.

Emma’s home.

Went back a couple minutes later and she was there, fixing herself a bowl of cereal at the sink. Still in her pajamas. Wearing her glasses, too.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her in her glasses. Felt what I feel sometimes glancing out the window just as the sun is waking up through the trees … a riot of itself and all its possibilities.

The unearned gift of catching the fleeting moment just before it assumes its responsibilities for a day that will all but take it for granted.

For some reason, seeing her in her glasses has always melted me.

How they’ve always framed a face that holds all the world can become.

She’s only herself in the morning … all poor eyesight and barefoot … and an abiding love for Lucky Charms.

Her glasses bring her into focus for me, and for a fleeting moment, I catch a glimpse of all her younger selves. The ones she doesn’t like being reminded of because she’s too busy looking forward.

It’s for me to look back.

I find myself wanting to keep her in her glasses in the kitchen for as long as I can.

So I mention the bananas … not just the ripe one set aside, but all the ones in the bunch, which have been pulled apart from each other and are starting to brown in the basket.

“I didn’t pull all those apart,” she corrected me.

I just assumed she had.

“Wasn’t me,” she confirmed.

“And that’s not how you ripen bananas, anyway. You keep the bunch together and put a ripe banana beside them.”

Oh.

“Ripe bananas release ethylene. It’s a gas … which breaks down cell walls and converts starch into sugar, eliminating the acid … which causes the other bananas to ripen.”

When she finished, the sophomore biomed major used her index finger to straighten the right side of her glasses, unconsciously.

A riot of herself and all of her possibilities.

Turned around and went back to her old room to savor her Lucky Charms.

I stood in the kitchen for a moment … in the still warm space between her presence and her absence.

Neither looking back nor looking forward … just awed by the sunrise.

Ripening, I guess.