Pumpkins, Pomegranates, and Quince

Have had trouble with my computer so have been unable to post these series of thoughts till now.

My best

M.


Written October 22

I went grocery shopping this morning. We’ve been having Indian Summer here in Georgia. Weather in the seventies and eighties. No auspicious turning of the leaves.

Today feels like fall; it is cool and I am clothed in a pair of sweats. The days have been difficult this past week. The cool weather is a relief, a more fitting companion to the grief. Everywhere I look, see, thing I taste or touch, I am remembering.

My grandparents are everywhere.

I drive past the Methodist Church, on the way to Kroger, and try not to look at their huge, yearly pumpkin patch. I have to drive past it regularly. I keep my head straight and do not turn my head. I don’t want to see.

Many a year I went trodding through, row after row, in search of the perfect pumkin for Papa and I to carve. This was one of our traditions and we missed nary a year through all the years of my childhood, adolescent, teen-dom and adulthood. Not until he got sick.

I have this photo of us together, one of my most favorites. I see it in my mind clearly. Papa and I are standing in front of the kitchen sink, near the cook-top, arms around each other. My head tilts toward his. I’m clad in an enormous green Polo sweatshirt and Papa is wearing a turtleneck. Our eyes, not just our smiles, say we are happy.

We have just carved a pumpkin, or ‘punkin’ as Papa would say. I am twenty, almost twenty one. He is seventy eight. We are only a year away from his second cancer diagnosis: the cancer that would come again and again till it came and stayed for good. Came till it carried him away.

There were many years since that picture where are ritual was abandoned. There were years a pumpkin was purchased, just in case, but not brought to my grandparents’ house when it became obvious Papa could not carve. The years he was too sick, too weak to hold the large knife and cut through the thick, pumpkin flesh.

There were years I didn’t want to, didn’t want the burden of the last time. I am not sure of the last time as I write. I am sure this is not accidental.

So I walk into Kroger and the first thing I see is, of course, pumpkins. Lots: decorative pumpkins, cooking pumpkins, carving pumpkins, miniature pumpkins. Pumpkins everywhere.

I stop and look, touch a few, thinking of how I should look for one smooth on all sides, with a nice, flat bottom and a sturdy stem (needed when lifting and replacing the ‘lid’ once a pumpkin is transformed into a jack-o-lantern.) Hesitating, I pick up a few smaller ones, letting the heft of each resonate in my hands. I feel the ones with really smooth skin then check their bottoms and balance.

I don’t touch any of the ones large enough for carving. I don’t want to get that near. That could cause a full-on breakdown in the middle of the produce department. No, I will not buy one. I do not want one.

I make my way through the organics, compliment the produce manager on the improvement of the selection (they had organic bananas today!) and go about hunting through oranges, kiwis, and other various items. Past the organics, in the ‘exotic’ section small bowls are filled with extremely limited supplies of papaya, strawberry papaya, star-fruit, coconut, and plantains, I spot an item that gets my attention. Quince.

I have never eaten quince, but my grandma used to talk about her grandma’s home-made quince jelly in a way that makes me want them.

Quinces are a strange fruit. They require work; you must cook them before eating. No, they will not give up their pleasure easily: at least three hours in a slow oven of 250 degrees till the flesh turns clear and the fruit is soft – so says “The Settlement Cookbook” (which I will consult upon returning home.)

I turn a quince over in my hands. It looks like a deformed green apple, a perfect circle that decided to sprout a little neck. Their shape is close to a pomegranate. I buy three.
I almost leave the section when I see in a small bowl, pomegranates. Here we go again.

I tear up, so I take a few deep breaths, hoping the woman right in front of me with her hands full of potatoes will be done quickly. Looking past both her and the fruit, I concentrate on the wall of salad dressings and dangling packages of croutons above. There are plain, garlic, and seasoned croutons, many specialty flavors. Kroger must be expecting a run on croutons. I take a look around me: no one. The potato woman has gone and the coast is clear.

Exhaling and grateful I’d chosen to shop early this Saturday morning, I return to the pomegranates, a delicacy introduced to me by my grandma when I was somewhere shy of kindergarten. Every fall my grandma and I would wait for the pomegranates, each eating our first one together.

Unlike quince, they do not need to be cooked. Like the quince, they do not give up their pleasure easily. You must be patient as you pick your way through the honeycomb-like inside, plucking out each seed, swallowing the piquant sweet-sourness. You must either be very careful or wear something you do not care about when eating pomegranates: the juice stains. The risk is worth it.

It takes me a moment before I can make myself pick up one of them. The color is so beautiful, the fruit so plump that I force myself. They are not like the pomegranates last year, shriveled, small, the first crop after my grandma’s death.

I did not eat them early. Late in the season sitting alone at my grandparents’ kitchen table that had become ours, I ate one small, deep, ruby pomegranate. With care I plucked each seed, eating memories until there were none left. I don’t remember the taste. I didn’t eat it for the taste. The seeds were a legacy.

I don’t know if I will be able to eat the pomegranates this year, but I brought them home with me. I have set them, four in a bowl, carefully arranged with golden delicious apples. Somehow not buying them was worse than bringing them home.

I left the grocery store with three quince, four pomegranates and no pumpkin. I cannot explain the reasons. Grief is not reasonable.