I visited Doug and Esta last week on Friday, during my day-long layover at LAX as I flew between Narita and Harry Reid. When they graciously invited me to rest at their house, I had notions of starting a journal about my trip to Japan. But after an hour of preparing to do just that, I flopped sideways on the living room couch. I slept the day away, physically and mentally exhausted from traveling in Japan, where I understand so little: how to navigate inside and between cities on foot and by public transit, how to understand an address when it’s written, let alone how to express the location of my hostel for an Amazon delivery. It takes a toll, to understand basic everyday customs and language — how to use a toilet, to bathe, to order food — in a country where people seem particularly mindful about customs and language.

Seeing the two of them was an enormous pleasure and a great comfort, doubly because only a week earlier we had met in Kyoto. I had been to their home in Culver City only once, and remarked how the city design and architecture of LA being a bit jarring after staying in Japan for 17 days. So my sense of ease wasn’t about being back in California or in the US. It was about being with lifelong friends. Although we see each other all too infrequently, we’ve known each other for over three decades.

They have an avocado tree in their backyard. An avocado tree! Doug wraps each one in its own little silk bag, to protect the fruit from squirrels. Squirrels are clever, I don’t know why they don’t just gnaw away at the stem so they can carry off the fruit to remove the gift wrapping at their own leisure, but the method does work. He wrapped up a few for me to take on my flight, and they had ripened enough for me to enjoy on Thursday and Friday. I wrote:

This Is Just to Say

I have eaten
the avocados
that were in
my luggage

and which
you had generously
packed
away for me

Thank you
they were luscious
so ripe
and so smooth

Doug sent a haiku as a rejoinder:

I ate the creamy
Avocados with scars from
A hungry squirrel

The avocado, aguacate, alligator pear — I never had one as a child except as a thin green gruel in Taco Bell, but when I went to Berkeley for grad school I discovered I loved them in sandwiches and of course as guacamole. The best store-bought ones most reliably seem to come from Mexico. So many of my favorite foods originate or became popular there — vanilla, chocolate, chili peppers of every variety. Each time I visit Mexico I find more dishes to love, or simply to enjoy well-prepared street foods: tacos de pescado, aguachile, huaraches, huitlacoche.

The generous bounty of Mexico.