On my grandparents’ property in Escazú – when Escazú had more pastures than condominiums – there was a huge thunderous jocote. During the harvest, the rod to lower them was the most coveted instrument in all of San Antonio. I always thought that the neighbors borrowed it and that’s why it often didn’t show up.
The most intrepid cousins climbed the tree and began to shout: “A mature one goes!” and those of us who stayed below ran to catch it and prevent it from bursting.
The advantage of staying down was to eat the best ones. The ripe jocotes were delicate; the green ones, had to be left to eat with salt. The pintones, on the other hand, were firm, acidic and crunchy. “With what fervor to bite the tense skin, and make the yellow and perfect juice pop…” recalls Julieta Dobles in her poem Vertigos del jocote.
When there was a good pile on the ground, we would lie down on the grass and start eating, one after the other, without anyone thinking of counting how many they had. We ended up with sticky hands, the juice dripping down our arms and our clothes all dripping. From time to time someone announced that he could not take it anymore. Five minutes later he was still eating. The stomach pain that night was not a side effect;
it was part of the experience.
For that reason, long before I knew how to distinguish a savannah oak from a poró, or a guanacaste from a yellow courteous, I already knew how to recognize a jocote stick. It didn’t need to have leaves or fruit. Its branches, crooked and disordered, were enough.
I lived in England for more than ten years. When someone offered to bring something from Costa Rica, I always asked the same question: Are there jocotes yet?
They never arrived. Maybe because the harvest didn’t coincide with the trips or because no one wanted to stain the clothes in the suitcase with such fragile fruit.
It was in England that I began to ask myself questions that I had never asked myself when I had the jocotes at my fingertips. The jocote is native to Mesoamerica. Its name comes from the Nahuatl xocotl. It withstands months of drought, loses all its leaves in the summer, and, just when one would think it is dead, blooms on its bare branches.
The fruits appear when the foliage has not yet recovered, as if the tree had decided to feed us first and then clothe itself.
In addition, like the güitite and the poró, it is enough to drive a stake into the ground so that, with a little rain, it ends up becoming a tree. My English friends looked at me with a mixture of disbelief and amazement when I explained to them that in Costa Rica one could cut a branch, plant it and, a short time later, eat its fruits. You don’t fully appreciate the tropics until you try to explain it to someone who didn’t grow up in it.
Since I returned to Costa Rica, when I see a little truck with jocotes on the side of the road, it is difficult for me not to stop. Some fruits are bought because one is hungry. Others because they awaken a younger version of oneself.
A few days ago, I left the gym and saw that the jocote stick in the parking lot was loaded with green fruits. I’ve known him for years. I’ve seen it lose its leaves and endure the summer, but that afternoon I stopped a little longer.
I suspect it’s still there because it was fortunate enough to grow exactly where the parking lot ends and the sidewalk begins. If it had been five meters in, it would have been cut long ago.
The Central Valley changed. The living fences gave way to walls. The courtyards became narrower. And trees that bear fruit are hardly planted anymore: some say that they dirty the sidewalks, cars and roofs. It’s funny how much we are uncomfortable with the same things that we used to look forward to.
Childhood also changed. Today some parents say that it is not convenient for children to eat jocotes because they could choke on the seed, and that it is not a good idea to climb a tree because they could fall.
Surely both things are true, but I imagine that the daily commute to school is still much more dangerous than a seed or a jocote stick.
I don’t know if the huge thunderous jocote of my grandparents is still standing. I’m going to find out. Who stops someone from shouting:
“A mature one goes!”