By Valentine's Day is Sunday and this is the thirty-ninth with Marvin, and the math of it — thirty-nine Valentine's Days — is a number I find both staggering and insufficient, because thirty-nine sounds like a lot until you realize that you want forty and fifty and sixty and that the disease is stealing the numbers I haven't gotten to yet, is taking the future Valentine's Days and replacing them with days that look like Valentine's Day on the calendar but do not feel like Valentine's Day in the house, because Valentine's Day requires a man who knows your name and knows why he loves you and Marvin knows my name some days and doesn't other days and the why of his love is stored somewhere I cannot access and he cannot access and the inaccessibility is the grief, the daily, hourly, minutely grief of loving a man whose love for you is locked in a room you cannot open.
I bought him a card. I wrote: "Thirty-nine years. I would do them all again. Every single one. Even the one where you insisted on wallpaper in the bathroom." He read it. He laughed. The laugh was Marvin — the real Marvin, the man underneath the disease — and the laugh lasted three seconds and then it was gone and he looked at the card again as if for the first time. But the three seconds happened. The laugh was real. Three seconds of Marvin. Three seconds is a window. I will take every window I am given and I will press my face to the glass and I will not look away.
I made chocolate-dipped strawberries — simple, festive, the kind of thing you make on Valentine's Day when the man you're making them for may not understand the occasion but will understand the chocolate, because chocolate is universal, chocolate crosses all cognitive boundaries, chocolate is the lingua franca of love and the last pleasure to go. Marvin ate three. He licked the chocolate off his fingers. He was, for the duration of the chocolate, completely happy. I watched him. I memorized his face. I always memorize his face.
The strawberries were the heart of it — the thing Marvin reached for, the thing that needed no explanation. In the days since Valentine’s Day I’ve been thinking about how to hold onto that simplicity, that uncomplicated brightness, and this Strawberry Pineapple Banana Lava Flow Smoothie is the answer I keep coming back to: all the sweetness of a strawberry, layered and vivid, no occasion required. It’s the kind of thing you can set in front of someone and watch their face change, the way his face changed over the chocolate, and that’s enough — that is always enough.
Strawberry Pineapple Banana Lava Flow Smoothie
Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes | Total Time: 10 minutes | Servings: 2
Ingredients
- 1 cup fresh or frozen strawberries, hulled
- 1 cup pineapple chunks, fresh or frozen
- 1 ripe banana, peeled and sliced
- 1/2 cup coconut milk
- 1/2 cup plain or vanilla yogurt
- 1/2 cup pineapple juice
- 1/2 cup orange juice
- 1 cup ice cubes
- Sliced strawberries and pineapple wedge, for garnish (optional)
Instructions
- Blend the pineapple layer. In a blender, combine pineapple chunks, banana, coconut milk, pineapple juice, and 1/2 cup of ice. Blend until completely smooth. Pour evenly into two tall glasses and set aside.
- Rinse the blender. Quickly rinse the blender jar so the colors stay distinct and vibrant.
- Blend the strawberry layer. Add strawberries, yogurt, orange juice, and remaining 1/2 cup of ice to the blender. Blend until smooth and deeply pink.
- Layer for the lava effect. Slowly pour the strawberry mixture over the back of a spoon held just above the pineapple layer in each glass, allowing it to settle gently on top. The two colors will bleed together at the edges — that’s the lava.
- Garnish and serve. Add a sliced strawberry to the rim of each glass and a pineapple wedge if desired. Serve immediately with a straw and stir gently before drinking to swirl the layers.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 240 | Protein: 5g | Fat: 7g | Carbs: 43g | Fiber: 4g | Sodium: 55mg