Can you be homesick for a place that was never your home?

The other day at the grocery store I bought a mango.  I didn’t really think much of it, other than mangoes are my favorite food and I rarely, if ever, get to eat them.  I let it sit on the counter for a few days to let it get extra ripe (just the way I like them) and forgot about it until this afternoon.  As I stood over the kitchen sink, mango juice all over my face and hands and grinning like an idiot, I closed my eyes and let my mind transport me to Melchor de Mencos, Guatemala…

Well, I guess I should start in Flores.  Remember when I was almost stranded at a military checkpoint?  I ended up that day in Flores, a colorful little island in Lake Petén Itzá and I had never been more grateful to arrive somewhere safely as I was that day.  Having already spent a few days in Flores a month or so previously, I knew my way around and wandered down to the docks to watch the kids doing flips and tricks.  Before long, I had made friends with a group of locals (who just happened to have an icy bucket of beer) and I got to practice my Guatemalan slang, which, as it turns out, was pretty localized to the southern region where I had been bar tending and was not quite up to par in the northern province of Petén.  My day ended with a motorcycle ride, zipping around the side streets of the neighboring towns, a typical American “WOO HOO!” escaping my lips every so often.  My new friends promised to come pick me up the day after next to give me a ride back to Belize, and I spent the rest of the night chatting with fellow backpackers who I had met in other cities throughout my travels.  It really is a small world.

Julio came to pick me up the day after a beautiful trip to the ruins of Tikal and as we drove the hour and a half it took to reach the Belizean border, he told me of his woodworking business and the beautiful kitchens he builds.  We sang duets to the songs on the radio that we both knew and I let my feet dangle out of the window for most of the ride.  By the time we reached Melchor de Mencos, Julio felt like an old friend and we decided to stop for a beer before I went through immigration.  The interesting thing about this border town is that because there are only three types of (crappy) beer you can possibly buy in Belize, Belizeans and ex-pats will cross the border and pay the $20 exit fee just to sit at the bar outside immigration and drink Mexican or Guatemalan beer.  Instead of sitting at the bar, though, I insisted that we track down mangoes and eat them while we drank our beer in a park.  I didn’t even wait for him to pull out his pocket knife before smashing the mango into my face.  I just peeled it and went to town, mango juice dripping all the way down to my elbows.

I mowed down three mangoes this way before walking across the border to Belize, mango still covering my face like a toddler who just learned to eat by herself.  Which brings me back to the mango I ate today over the kitchen sink.  This wave of homesickness for a place I never lived was brought on by a simple, juicy fruit, never mind the mango strings that will be stuck in my teeth for days no matter how many times I floss.  With the last bite fully devoured, I waited a few moments before wiping my face and washing my hands, just to give the memory time to fully develop and let the mango juice soak into my skin in the hopes that if I wished hard enough, I could go back to that memory for just one day to bask in the sun and feel the itch of fresh mango while polishing off one last Guatemalan beer.