Watermelon Dreams

There are some things that do not belong to a season. They are the season.

For me, watermelon is summer.

Not the kind of summer from advertisements, with perfect beaches and expensive vacations. I mean the real summer. The one from childhood. The one that smelled of warm grass, dusty roads, open windows, and evenings that seemed as if they would never end.

And somewhere in the middle of it, there was always watermelon.

I still think it is one of the most magical fruits in the world. From the outside, it looks plain and quiet. A large green shell, heavy and ordinary, sitting on the kitchen table or cooling in a bucket of cold water.

You cannot see what is hidden inside. You have to trust it.

Then comes the moment when someone cuts it open.

The knife slips through the thick rind with a soft cracking sound, and suddenly there it is—the bright red heart hidden inside. Sweet. Cold. Shining. Covered with black seeds like little pieces of the night sky scattered across a sunset.

Maybe that is why watermelon feels so much like summer itself.

The whole year is the green shell. Long months of work, school, cold mornings, dark evenings, waiting, hurrying, carrying too much.

Then finally, summer arrives and opens the year for a little while.

Inside is something softer. Something sweeter. A different kind of life.

When I was a child, my sister and I waited for that moment as if it were a holiday.

We adored watermelon.

We did not eat it politely.

We sat side by side with huge slices in our hands, the juice already running down our fingers before we could even take the second bite. Our faces were sticky. Our shirts were spotted with pink drops. Sometimes there was more watermelon on our cheeks than in our mouths.

But there was one thing my sister always did.

She hated the seeds.

Back then, there were no seedless watermelons. Every slice was full of them. Small black seeds hidden everywhere, waiting to surprise you.

So, my sister always made me remove them for her.

I sat there carefully picking them out one by one while she waited impatiently beside me, already holding her slice and asking, “Did you get them all?”

Of course, I always missed one.

And of course, she always found it.

She looked at me as if I had committed a terrible crime. Then we both started laughing.

When I finally gave her the clean slice, she took a big bite, closed her eyes for a second, and every single time she said the same thing:

“This is the best watermelon I’ve ever eaten.”

Every time.

As if the watermelon from yesterday had never existed.

As if this one, right now, in this exact moment, was the sweetest thing in the world.

And maybe she was right.

Because perhaps the best things are not the truly perfect ones. Perhaps they are simply the ones we are sharing.

And for those few moments, the whole world felt complete.

Childhood often feels like that when we remember it.

Not like one long story, but like small bright pieces.

A bicycle leaning against a tree. Bare feet on hot ground. A dog sleeping in the shade. The smell of tomatoes from the garden. And two children sitting side by side with watermelon juice on their hands.

We do not know, while we are living those moments, that one day they will become treasures.

At the time, they feel ordinary.

We think there will always be another summer. Another watermelon. Another evening. Another chance to sit beside the people we love.

But time is strange.

It does not take everything away at once. It moves quietly, almost politely.

Summer vacations become shorter. Children grow up. Brothers and sisters no longer spend every day together. Life slowly fills with different homes, different worries, different routines.

And yet sometimes, without warning, one small thing can bring it all back.

Even now, when I cut open a watermelon, something inside me changes.

The first bite is never only a bite.

It is a door.

Suddenly I am not standing in my kitchen anymore.

I am back in those long summer days. I can almost see my sister beside me again. I can hear her asking me to take out the seeds. I can hear her laugh when I miss one. And then, after the first bite, I can hear the sentence I have carried with me for years:

“This is the best watermelon I’ve ever eaten.”

Perhaps that is why I dream about watermelons so often.

Not because I am hungry.

Because I miss something.

Or maybe someone.

I think those dreams are not really about the fruit itself. They are about everything hidden inside it.

The feeling of being small and safe. The feeling that the people we love are only one room away. The feeling that happiness can be something simple: a slice of watermelon, a sister beside you, and an evening that still has hours left.

Watermelon is a strange kind of miracle.

It teaches us that the sweetest things are often temporary.

A watermelon is perfect only for a short time. Summer is the same. Childhood too.

You cannot keep them forever.

You cannot place them in a jar and save them exactly as they were.

But perhaps that is what makes them beautiful.

Some things are precious because they do not stay.

And maybe our task is not to hold on to them forever, but to carry their sweetness with us.

Like the watermelon carries summer inside its green shell, we carry our memories inside ourselves.

Through difficult years. Through winter days. Through loneliness. Through all the ordinary afternoons when life feels too serious and too heavy.

Somewhere inside us there is still a bright red place where laughter lives.

A place where two children sit side by side, one removing seeds, the other waiting impatiently.

A place where, after every first bite, someone says:

“This is the best watermelon I’ve ever eaten.”

A place where summer never ends.

That is what I call a watermelon dream.

It is not really a dream about fruit.

It is a dream about remembering who we were when life was sweet, simple, and shared.

And maybe, every time we cut open a watermelon, we are not only opening the fruit.

Maybe we are opening the door to that part of ourselves again.

GK