A mystical secret
Sometimes mum would open a can of pineapples. They seemed fake — how can a fruit be so perfectly circular, how does something grow with a hole in the middle? I wondered.
One day dad bought a real pineapple. It didn’t look like a fruit at all. More like one of the plants from aunt’s garden — the kind that’s impossible to either appreciate or kill.
I saw no correspondence between what dad bought, and what came out of a can. I felt a little sorry for dad. Maybe he was scammed and got sold a pineapple tree instead of a fruit?
We didn’t know how to approach it it.
I remember the pineapple sitting in the middle of the table at grandma’s. Everyone around staring, as if expecting it to open by itself to reveal a mystical, tropical secret. Or, at least a can of pineapples we could actually eat.