Health knowledge made personal
 The day we planted them, we knew that they wouldn't fruit for three years. And that's when we did the fast math and realized that, in less than two years, my older daughter would be away at college. Every time I look at the pomegranate trees, I think of that, that the first harvest of the fruits won't include her. And, yes, it tugs at me. Right now as I write this, I feel a little stab.This past weekend, I saw a friend of mine who told me about a pomegranate tree she had seen nearby, heavy with pomegranates ready for picking. I told her I knew someone who lives near there, and I contacted that person to see if she knew the pomegranate tree owner. She did, she asked the owner if folks could pick one or two from her tree, and she said yes.  So yesterday, my older daughter was off from school. While out for lunch at one of our favorite places (Cafe Sunflower--one of the ten best vegetarian restaurants in the United States), I told her about the pomegranate tree. And so, off we went. And as she reached up and picked a ripe fruit, I shot a photo that I knew immediately would be precious to me (here is part of it). And I felt gratitude swell up inside--for the lady with the tree, and the permission she granted us. For these precious moments with my daughter. And for the shared memory of the first pomegranate we have ever picked. In the myth of Persephone, goddess of the Underworld, Hades kidnaps Persephone from her mother Demeter (goddess of the harvest), who then went into mourning, causing the earth to start dying. The common understanding, apparently, was that anyone who ate or drank while in the Underworld would spend eternity there. Persephone had nothing, except six pomegranate seeds. And thus, after Zeus freed her since he didn't want to see the earth die, Persephone was condemned to spend six months of every year as Hades' wife in the Underworld. And that's how the ancient Greeks explained the seasons.  Well, there are seasons as a mother as well. And now, for me, is the season of letting go, and not because I think my daughter will be going to Hades' side in the Underworld when she eventually leaves here, but because she will, indeed, be branching out (so to speak), on her own, grabbing onto life, onto pomegranates, with both hands. And when she travels to India, and Turkey, and Greece, and Spain, and Latin America, and China (all places where pomegranates grow), and, of course, back home, here, to where she grew up, to where two pomegranate trees wait for her, she will have the memory of that day when she first plucked a fruit of history, of her story, and set the course in motion.  My story, of course, about these last ten years and what I did when the towers fell (and what you can do, too) to provide food (and food for thought) for my daughters, is in my book , which, by the way, is pictured here at the Ernakulum Market in India. Big thanks to Amie Inman of Raxa Collective , and her son (who shot the photo). Amie and her family were original members of our community garden, before their eco-tourism business took them elsewhere. Before life started taking my daughters elsewhere as well. |
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Fast forward a little to Thanksgiving, and my older daughter who loves, loves, loves the painstakingly patient job of removing the delicious, ruby-red seeds from pomegranates, and who always ensures we have a beautiful salad with fresh greens from our garden, sprinkled with pomegranate seeds (and yellow pear tomatoes, if we're lucky).