Fruits of a mother’s love a bittersweet life lesson
California grove bursts forth with memories of childhood
Iretreated to the California desert briefly this past winter, in a rental where grapefruits and other citruses grow on trees for as far as the eye can see. This citrus abundance thrilled me, a girl who grew up in an apartment complex in Queens, where sidewalks, cement and stoops, not gardens or plants, ruled.
From the beginning of my visit, I delighted in gathering the citruses with a fruit picker pole and arranging them in bowls for display. These improvised still-lifes were a far cry from Cezanne’s juicy apples, but my painter’s eye feasted on the lush yellow hues.
Soon I was making pitchers of fresh juice, eating half globes of this delectable fruit – and thinking of my mother. She loved grapefruit. If she had to choose between that and chocolate Devil Dog cakes
(my favorite), grapefruit would always win.
I can see her sitting at our old Formica dinette table, segmenting the fruit with a special serrated knife. She would sprinkle a little sugar on top to counter the tartness and then slowly eat each severed section, squeezing the last bit of juice onto her spoon and into her mouth. Sometimes the grapefruits were a gorgeous ruby or blush pink, adding a special glow to this bittersweet memory.
My mother and I were not close. I wish I hadn’t been such an oppositional, mercurial kid, faulting her not doing and being more. Back then, I was young and oblivious to the fact that most women in mid-century America were “just housewives.” I wanted her to be curious about the world, like I was; to travel, to devour art and culture. Wanting more for myself, I pulled away, emotionally and geographically. I left for college at 17 and never
lived home again. The distance between us grew with the years.
Now, as a mother with two grown children, I’ve long since forgiven my mother for not living up to my fictionalized version of the perfect mother, and I hope she forgave me for not being what she may have wished for in a daughter. I also hope she knew that despite my moody fits, I was proud of her. She was a bright, educated, sensitive woman whose intuitive love and grasp of language live on in me.
My mother would be 100 this year. For the longest time, I believed we had little in common. But as I sat in California surrounded by grapefruit trees, I realized all the ways my mother and I were alike; our love of language, yes, and also our taste for pretty things, our penchant for criticism, our insecurities.
Who could have expected this grapefruit reverie, this unleashing of memory, this revised portrait of my mother and our relationship? Not me. But here it is, and I welcome it. I also like to think my mother would have been happy to learn I’ve come around to her favorite fruit.