Keeper of the Fruit Bowl (the Rules)

Keeper of the fruit bowl. Photo by Laura Edgerton.

A bowl of fruit that I had planned to bake with sits languishing on the kitchen counter. I feel immense guilt over this; the sweet, though not yet unpleasant, aroma of near-rot pervades the room, and I know that if I peer into the bowl, I will find a moldy orange or a mushy apple. There were times, during my childhood, when we did not have a lot of food, but I don’t remember ever being hungry; we had enough. Sometimes a large paper sack full of groceries would appear on the front porch; my mom said it was because she had prayed about it and her prayers had been answered. I should not have bought more apples; I’ve been daydreaming about apple crumble and the comforting scents of cinnamon, cloves, ginger and nutmeg wafting through the house as the crumble bakes. I should have waited until fall. I haven’t been able to focus much on baking for the last several years; the once enjoyable pastime has seemed unfamiliar, out of reach, as though it is a distant memory that I can’t quite manage to recall.

There are different forms of fruit in the house – fresh, frozen, dried and freeze-dried. Fresh fruit is seasonally purchased whenever it’s on sale or has a store coupon, we put frozen unsweetened berries in smoothies and dried fruit is occasionally used (dried cranberries on salads and dates for baking). Molly, my youngest daughter, and I regularly go through Aldi’s bagged freeze-dried strawberries and apples. When the girls were little, they enjoyed sitting and coloring while I removed long, thin strings from bananas or bits of white pith beneath orange peels. We always ate dinner at the kitchen table together. They still needed their hands wiped then; they still needed help brushing their teeth. They still wanted to be tucked into bed; they still wanted to hear a book read to them before going to sleep. They were content with our quiet, everyday routines for years.

There is a strange social interlude, for parents, which occurs between elementary school and whatever is going to happen after high school; I’ve never heard it mentioned before. If you don’t already have a group of friends or a strong support system by this point, you’re on your own. It starts out lonely and just gets worse. One day you realize that you and your partner (if you’re part of a couple) have been so focused on the joint responsibilities and goals of parenting that you don’t recognize yourselves as a romantic unit independent from parenthood. This can and will lead to arguments that never seem to be resolved. If your child did a year or two of recreation soccer or baseball in elementary school, then those parental connections are probably long gone; people have short attention spans. If your child joined a travel team and continued to be involved with sports in middle and high school, then it is possible that you still have a built-in network there. If the people you knew existed solely within the cookie-selling pyramid scheme also known as Girl Scouts, then those parents are gone as well, and it’s possible that you didn’t like them even when you sat through weekly meetings together and assisted with crafts. You did not have to like them; society has a way of thrusting people together in situations that possess commonality through their children, but it doesn’t mean that adults are obligated to offer more than polite discourse during those times. If you’ve been able to segue into working from home, post-COVID, then you’ve had little to no opportunity to attempt to form friendships with other adults; it’s possible that the extent of your interactions outside of the home are comprised of grocery store visits and talking with the bagger about Dungeons & Dragons and the weather forecast. As I said, it’s lonely, but I don’t hear anyone else talking about this and I don’t understand why.

In the unforgettable film Barbie (2023), America Ferrera’s character Gloria executes a powerful monologue that always makes me cry. Everything she says resonates so deeply within me; it’s one of my favorite moments in the film. She details society’s unrealistic expectations of women to be everything that everyone needs all the time, pointing out that not only do we need to maintain this quasi-perfect fabrication of ourselves, but we need to do it without ever complaining or challenging that construct. Gloria’s voice becomes stronger as she speaks, even as we watch the manifestation of her internal struggle with intense emotions and a desire to convey thoughts that have been weighing on her mind for a long time. We see her confidence growing and, by the end of the speech, there is a palpable sense of release and an audible exhalation in the room full of other women. More importantly, her own daughter’s perception of her, in that moment, seems to shift from a previous attitude of irritation into something more understanding. It’s as though Sasha is amazed that her mom embodies much more, after all, than just the ever-present, nurturing yet authoritative persona that she’s come to view as annoying; she’s able to view her mother from a different perspective, silently acknowledging, for the first time, perhaps, that Gloria is a strong, interesting woman who’s dared to give a voice to such an important issue and who has needs and dreams outside of her primary role as mother.

The desire to guide my daughters’ emerging independence is often at odds with wanting to retain a sense of control, to protect them against the unknowns of the world, to encourage them to think for themselves even as I miss the toddler versions of them and how they used to fall asleep on my chest for hours at a time. Is there a parallel then, I wonder, between the intrinsic maturation of one’s children and something as inanimate as a fruit bowl? Is there a connection between the inevitable decay of uneaten fruit and the demise of friendships? I want the fruit to be there when I have time to bake; I want all of it to last.

Keeper Rules

Look for blood oranges and fall for the local grocery store’s clever ploy of marketing them as raspberry blood oranges, which sound much more special but taste identical to the standard variety.

Choose fruit that is in season and reasonably priced.

Throw away a single moldy orange, after a week, when the familiar odor of its unseen yet insidious presence begins to permeate not only the kitchen but the surrounding rooms as well.

Admire the remaining oranges as they bask in late afternoon sunlight. Daydream about making a citrus galette and a batch of preserves. Make dinner instead.

Think about parallels between the lives of oranges and our everyday routines. Go to sleep. Repeat.