Food, Family and Memory

Or maybe I should say citrus was California?  But no, despite the Southern California citrus industry going the way of the subsequent aerospace industry, I still think citrus is California.  I was inspired to write about California citrus by an article that recently ran in the Sunday Los Angeles Times’ L.A. Then and Now column: “Southern California’s Great Citrus Had It’s Crate Advertising.” The article is about the colorful labels slapped onto the wooden crates the fruit was packed in, and how they were considered cutting-edge marketing at the time.  Big, bold, multi-color images of the fruit and the growers logos let the consumer know that the oranges, lemons and grapefruit of that specific grower were special, above average. 

I sing to my grandsons, one via the wonders of video "Skype-ing," and the other up close and very personal. I perform the usual stuff mostly: "The Wheels on the Bus," "Old MacDonald,""Itsey-bitsey Spider", and "The Alphabet Song," with everyone's favorite line: "L-M-N-O-P." 

One day, however, I  found myself, singing a made-up ditty in Spanish to my Jewish-Mexican-American, two and a half year-old, West Coast grandson with a tune that  seemed vaguely familiar but that I could not, at first, place: "Yo tengo hambre ahora, Yo tengo hambre ahora, Yo tengo ha-ambre ahora, Yo tengo hambre, hambre, hambre ahoraaa."  That, by the way, translates to: "I'm hungry now" which he usually is. 

I searched my brain for the origins of the tune and discovered its source in the long buried confines of my youthful synagogue attending memories. It was the music to: "Heiveinu Sholom Aleichem." "Peace be with you" is how that translates, more or less. This is a nice sentiment that may explain its continued presence in my neuronal liturgical coffers despite my having long ago strayed from the fold.

There is a difference between jam and preserves.  Jam is sweet fruit you spread on toast.  Preserves are a frozen moment in time—a piece of summer that you can carry with you the rest of the year:  high grass, long naps, warm evenings, your front porch… 

My neighbor Mary Wellington makes preserves.

Mary is a farmer.  And not only a single-family farmer--a single farmer.  She works three acres of very diverse orchards of Glenn Annie canyon all by herself, on which she grows over fifty varieties of fruit. 

Her preserves were so treasured and ubiquitous at local farmer’s markets that many people came to call her “The Jam Lady.” Her Blenheim Apricot jam is intoxicating.  Her Blood Orange marmalade is insane.  The red raspberry is well… indescribable.  But Mary Wellington preserves more than fruit.

If you wander up Glen Annie you will find a two story clapboard farmhouse peeking out from behind the persimmon tree.  Mary will greet you with her typical burst of enthusiasm and a clap of her hands.  She will launch into an impromptu tour of her orchard and its latest bounty:  You will flit from tree to tree sampling God’s offerings in a feast of the senses that is literally Edenic.  (I know I get religious about food—but I was raised that way.)   Taste the Santa Rosas… Smell the outside of this blood orange… Look at the color on these apricots... Oh don’t mind the bruise—just taste it.

As a little girl, I loved to swim, still do. Just about any chance I got to go swimming, I would. I dreamed of having my own pool. My bigger dreams were to be an Olympic swimmer and also to swim the English Channel.

Pools and water became an obsession as well as a love. I would look into my backyard and fantasize a swimming pool. It never appeared. My dad always lived in an apartment building with a pool so there was usually a place for me to swim. When I was older and using his for exercise, I would have to share it with his elderly neighbors. They could get nasty and it was tricky navigating around their crankiness. Some of them became my new best friends in life...as long as we stayed in our own lanes.

When I saw the David Hockney series of pools, I totally understood how the swimming pool was his muse.