When Is The Last Time You Peeled An Orange?
Considering it could make my eyes swell shut, maybe still the best decision I've made all day.
I haven’t been writing much lately. “Move in silence,” isn’t that what they say?
My silence has been raucous in its own way.
I peeled an orange today.
I can’t remember the last time I peeled an orange, not clearly. I can find fragments of memories related to orange-peeling. But not the actual event itself.
I never ate a lot of oranges, but I’ve almost always owned an orange peeler.
Except now. I peeled it the long way.
I bought a Clementine tree the other day. Spent $200 on 4 fruit trees and a passionflower vine. The first tree was a guava being sold by a nice European woman who invited me to stay after and have a glass of water.
My intention after was only to buy a passionflower vine, but I unknowingly walked into a residential professional nursery. She had every kind of plant you could imagine, including a few illegally imported from Japan. “Here, try a sample,” and she had every ripe fruit on display. I tried a Loquat for the first time, almost bought one but I’d already committed to the 3 unplanned trees.
I must have had doe eyes.
“Can dogs eat oranges,” I check with Google before offering Millie a slice.
She’s not impressed. It’s organic but still missing something I can’t quite name from a past life. Technically, I’m not supposed to eat citrus. It’s become something of a personal crime. Probably reason enough I don’t own an orange peeler, but if I own a Clementine it’s time get one.
I went to a Seventh-Day Adventist school as a kid. Two classrooms, all the grades mixed, like some kind of Little Home on the Prairie. Every year, someone in the church would start taking orders for citrus. Get in line.
Naval oranges, blood oranges, clementines, grapefruits, lemons, limes. Sold by the box. Shipped straight from Florida to our little town in Wisconsin.
The fruit would arrive in the most perfect condition. Ripe and ready to eat. I don’t think I’ve ever had an orange taste better than that in my life.
Citrus is a histamine liberator. You might hear histamine and think anti-histamine, and think seasonal allergies. You’re on the right track. There are histamines in food, and our body produces histamines too. Histamine liberators, as foods, trigger your body to release more histamine.
I have a problem with histamine. I can’t get rid of it fast enough, and it causes all kinds of things like post nasal drip and water eyes on good days. Swollen eyes, rashes, hives, and being forced into a coma-like sleep on the bad ones.
Anti-histamines don’t help it, so I mostly avoid the worst food offenders.
I can feel the histamine rising since I ate that orange. It’s in my cheeks, flushing right now. Have you ever eaten too much of something with vinegar and found your nose bead up with sweat? It’s a bit like that.
I remember being impatient peeling an orange by hand.
I was also unable to get over the texture of the pith, so I would obsessively remove every last bit. It could take me an hour to find satisfaction before eating.
I found myself in a similar situation with popcorn, annoyed by the hull. I’d separate the meat from the hull, nibbling like a little chipmunk through a bowl.
For a while now, when I sit down to write a voice loomed saying, “it must have a point!” That the story I share with you only works if there is a clear value-added outcome deployed.
But isn’t that such a funny thing? Life itself — a series of experiences and then we still die. And then we still reach an end that most likely does not have a clear, valuable outcome.
These little stories are my little lives. Experience them, and then let them die.