Papaya

Papaya rhymes with Eia, my niece (a well-loved chef in a restaurant in the US), who posted this photo on her FB wall. 

Eia is not really a blood niece, but I call the children of my close friends my nieces and nephews because they are gifts of grace. When my close friends and I meet, these kids hover around and treat me like the aunt who comes from a branch of their own family tree.   

Back to the photo of papaya from the kitchen of Eia.  

For three months in a row before that picture was posted, I had been eating huge slices  of ripe papaya for breakfast, and sometimes for lunch and dinner, too. Yummy yellow!  

They led to my ruin. When I went for my regular blood tests, my doctor was appalled. My sugar level broke all my previous records.

Her furrowed brows showed what she didn't need to ask, Why? 

I was quick to defend myself,  “I haven't been eating too much rice, nor chocolates, as you advised.”

“Tell me what you've been having for breakfast, lunch, and dinner,” she intoned. 

When she heard papaya, papaya, papaya, she tut-tutted so loud I thought I'd be guillotined.

“From today,” she said, “you eat only this much papaya in one day,” she gestured with her hands, demonstrating a size too teeny to see or even describe. “Then  have another blood test after a month.”

I lost my tongue and came home ready to drown my disappointment on FB.

Irony of ironies, in full color, in all its luscious, scrumptious best, this papaya photo on Eia's Timeline jumped at me!

I've always been prepared for life's surprises, but never for life's papayas.

But like a good patient, with every effort I could muster, albeit reluctantly, I have stayed away from papaya since. I haven't gone back to see my doctor as she ordered, though. I am afraid she'll say, “I told you so!” about the papaya.

When I finally convince myself to make that still-to-happen clinic visit, I am sure my doctor will make an edict: no more papaya.

Now my thoughts are running along this line: the fruit used by the snake to tempt Eve might have been papaya. And because papaya is the forbidden fruit, all I'd be left doing would be going back to Eia's photo, staring at it and blogging about it. 

Ah, papaya!