…The Salad that Spoke ©2010

by Dee-Dee Diamond

(Fortune lurked in my salad, not my teacup).

I was looking for my muse…for a week now.

It was playing hide & seek and winning.

The muse found me… today.

I was eating a chunky salad, I made of iceberg lettuce, celery and scallions.

I was minding my own business when the muse socked me in the mouth. so hard was its delivery, that I thought it cracked my molar. I had bitten a generous forkful of crunch, when my teeth clanked a hard, alien thing.

Instinctively I spit the mouthful into my palm. In the half-chewed green mass was a rock. My muse out-did itself this time to announce its arrival.

The rock was no pebble but a diamond earring. huh?

It wasn’t mine, and I live alone.

Where, how, when did it get into my mixed green salad?

Perplexed I back tracked the origin of the bowl’s ingredients.

I had bought these 3 green vegetables from different sources in my neighborhood.

When I purchased the tightly clear wrapped lettuce, it was from a fruit and vegetable street vendor. The Bangladeshi man handed me the head from a pile, displayed on his cart.

The “Foxy brand” bunch of celery I bought in D’Agostino supermarket, last week.

Yesterday I got the scallions that were rubber-banded together, from Agatha & Valentina’s Shop, organic foods’ section.

Whose ear is missing my diamond stud? Is it a real diamond or a zircon? The mystery remains the same for me. What is my muse trying to lead me to? I ponder the diamond in my mixed salad, it was more unusual, than a comet hitting the earth, (for me at least). What story or stories was it trying to reveal that laid buried deep inside of this writer?

Was it a sign like the one that was sent to my mother, when I was 17 years old? That too, concerned a hidden diamond.

My late mother read tea leaves. She did it for friends & family, only. It just came naturally to her like her other gift of playing the piano by ear. Fortune-telling always frightened me, so I never let her read my teacup.

One afternoon i returned home from during my senior high school term.

As soon as I opened the apartment, my mother was in my face.

“Dee-Dee, Dee-Dee I was reading my own tea leaves and I’m getting a diamond ring, immediately. she said it’s at the very top of my cup”.

“Mom, leave me alone, you know I don’t believe in that junk”! I retorted with annoyance.

I left my mother staring in her cup with disbelief as I made a beeline to take a shower. I had a date in about an hour.

The minute I came out of the bathroom, she started up again.

“Why is daddy getting me a ring? It's not my birthday, it’s not our anniversary or a holiday, did he do something wrong”? She was clearly confident in her reading.

I paid her no further attention, as I dressed for my date, with my boyfriend.

When I heard him honking his car’s horn in a rehearsed rhythm, I ran out the door yelling, “Bye mom, I won’t be late”.

My boyfriend gave me a peck on the cheek and hit the gas in his 1957 Firebird.

Soon after, we wanted a cigarette, (everyone smoked those days). I put a Salem in each of our mouths.

“My car’s lighter is not working…Dee-Dee get the matches in the glove compartment, please”.

The moment I hit the button, for the glove compartment, it popped.

A sparkling diamond engagement ring fell out.

“Dee-Dee will you marry me…I love you”?

I was surprised and spooked at the same time”!

My mother saw this in her cup!

This story became family folk-lure as my boyfriend became my husband of almost 50 years.

Now, what does this surprise “other diamond” … for-tell for me?