As a kid, I often suffered from nosebleeds. My parents had some 1 of traditional Chinese medicine, and they said this was caused by my love for 2 fruits. Lychees, my 3 , had given me "too much heat." But it didn't stop me from eating them by the 4 . After we moved from China to Canada, lychees became harder to find. Whenever we drove to a Chinatown, I would 5 all the fruit markets for my red jewels.
As I grow older, trying new fruits widens my horizons. Just when I thought I had 6 every pleasant fruity smell in the world, the lulo(龙葵) appeared at my regular fruit shop. Its taste left me wide-eyed and 7 . The strong, sweet flavor filled my whole house for days. It was such a 8 smell that I'd rather believe it was picked from a food scientist's imagination.
"What lasted is what the soul ate," Jack Gilbert wrote in his poem The Spirit and the Soul, "The way a child knows the world by putting it into his 9 ." Each tasting is a chance to be 10 with my inner child. The experience is no less 11 than seeing the ocean for the first time, leaving me 12 what else this world has been hiding from us.
I try most fruits only several times because I always love newer things. But there is one I keep returning to: the soursop(刺果番荔枝). When it is ripe, it tastes wonderful. Wait just one more day, 13 , and it starts to brown, giving off a terrible smell. Yes, it goes bad fast, 14 that life is too short. So don't let our sweetest days 15 ."Taste" the joys around us as they come along.
