Tangerine

march25

I’ve always been grateful for the tangerine.

And I’ve always felt bad eating the tangerine. A perfectly fine orange ball would just – be devoured. Disassembled, dismantled, decomposed; It feels like a crime. But I learned to appreciate it; All that it took to grow from nothingness to that orange fruit; All that was left of what once used to be its life – the peel, rough in texture – in a beautiful flower shape I always made sure to turn it into. I’ve always had a strange obsession with making the peel as closely representing the shape of a flower as possible. It always felt like I was doing the tangerine injustice if I didn’t leave what remained of it in a presentable fashion.

I have always tried to eat tangerines slowly, but never accomplished it. After I peel it I would always pull the whole of the fruit into 2 half circles of approximately equal amounts of sacs. I would then tell myself, do some more work before eating two more sacs; but every time I give in with no exception. 

Sometimes I would eat and eat and the flowery peels would build up all over my messy table in my dorm room. Felt like a water lily pond upon muddy waters of horrible silt and ooze.

That same lily pond once bloomed upon clear water though. 

We used to sit together, all 6 of us, in the living room. 2 on the couch to the left of the main table, 3 on the couch behind it, the television on the wall in front of it. One person, usually my dad, would occupy my grandpa’s tea desk in the upper right corner of the room. Crosstalk, soccer, and whatever show they played about the revolution would be the center of our focus – to our eyes, that is. Our hands were busy peeling tangerines and sending them into our mouths.  Soon the flower-shaped peels were all over the table. We never notice it building up.

All those tangerines that we ate came from the lad who sells fruits from his van downstairs. After walking around the river and the streets with my grandpa, he always took me to the lad who sells fruits from his van. No matter what else we got, we would always buy tangerines. I would take one out and fiddle with it, juggling it around like it’s a toy. The skin always had tons of pores on it and never looked soothing to touch; But in reality, the skin felt oh so smooth. 

Kind of like my grandpa’s hand. In these lazy afternoons, I would curl up my body against my grandpa’s and he would wrap his hands around mine. His hands so callused from years of labor in his youth; even if his later decades were spent in relative comfort, nothing will remedy the mark made by those years on him. Even so, to me, his rough skin always felt so soothing, so mature. 

He never had the luxury of an afternoon of tangerines and family company in his youth and the military was the only path out of poverty he saw for his family. So he took it. He made it multiply. He knew he wasn’t a fortunate son and used his own beauty and individualism to make way for his family. For my dad’s life. For my sister’s. For mine. He built up that nectar within him and willingly allowed another life to enjoy the literal fruits of his labor. 

A beautiful tangerine he became. I wish I realized that long ago.