Spitting pomegranate pits into the Seine.

I am going to a full moon picnic on the Pont des Arts (in the heart of Paris) tonight. An anglophone community organizes it every month to see the moon rise. Usually, it’s either too cold or too late for ‘yours truly’ to drag herself from home, but today I will go out. These get-togethers are fun even if tonight it will be cold, it’s a super moon tonight and the moonrise should be awesome – it we can even see it despite the overcast nature of the Paris sky tonight.

I am almost always overcome by shyness at these sorts of events, so I am very grateful that a friend is joining me tonight. Most people who know me wouldn’t guess that I have a shy bone in my body – but when surrounded by people I don’t know, and unless I can hide behind a comfortable role – like that of teacher, one I am very accustomed to – I feel judged and somehow lacking. So often I drink too much – and I reserve the right to do just that again tonight. If even I feel shy – maybe everybody feels like that at these sorts of get-togethers. We all work towards being friendly and non-judgemental and yet I will make a beeline towards familiar faces and start with a nice glass of wine.

Next month, I will miss this lovely event again because I will be out of town. Soon I will be visiting my family for Christmas and January 2025 in the god-forsaken USA. It has been 18 months since I last hugged my nieces, and they are growing fast and changing into the lovely girls they were intended to grow into. I am consciously implanting myself into their young lives these days.  This is partly because I remember the old Jesuit saying: “give me a child until he is seven and he is mine for life”. Also there is a good chance that I may never have grandchildren – aside from all of Kawangware Education Center that is – So I want to give some of myself to these young people who are blood relations.  

I wouldn’t want to be a child in America today – but I do trust that these girls’ parents are doing a good job teaching our girls how to feel safe in this difficult world. We have to trust them to bring us all to a better future, and I strongly believe that knowing their roots as they build their own wings is critical. I look forward to teaching the oldest of these little cousins how to make her own healthy and delicious food. My grandma taught me quite a bit about nutrition and preventative health – despite my lack of interest in the topic as I grew up. I hope I can enlist Miss Mae’s interest with some fun Christmas cooking: crepes are my first target (banana and Nutella should light up her socks as a filling).

If I’m honest I should confess that I am quite scared of spending a long time in the States. Before this latest electoral catastrophe, we also set up a camping tour of the Grand Canyon, and much of the Southwest with my adult daughter. We will both land in Los Vegas and rent a makeshift camper station wagon to do a two-week tour in December. Sadie has not yet seen the Grand Canyon or Sonoma, Arizona and I have never seen the Monument Valley or Joshua Tree National Park. So this will be an adventure indeed. We will drive around for two weeks then return to Sin City in time to fly to Austin for Christmas itself.

Meanwhile I am still grieving for the once United States. I remember a kinder gentler place from my childhood. I swear I saw only one homeless person when I lived in West Lafayette, Indiana in the 1960s. We were being driven to school by my mom and I saw that across a field was an abandoned school bus – in the telltale yellow that was always used for school buses. I must have asked Mom why it was over there nowhere near a road because she explained that a family with no other address lived in there. I was shocked because they obviously had no plumbing nor heat in that home, let alone a postal address. I was calculating how at least school had lunch and was warm for the kids, I would have gone silent for the rest of the ride to school. So much to think about.

Meanwhile, we are supposed to bring our own food and/or something to share to this moonrise picnic. So I thought I would bring a sandwich and a drink. Then I saw my pomegranate sitting there unloved and I decided to bring it too.

I love pomegranates but they are a major bother to prepare. In California, at Whole Foods or even Trader Joe’s, I loved to buy them already cleaned out into just their kernels – and I know many people happily swallow the seeds. But I don’t like to do that.

I remember the first pomegranate I ever saw: Pomegranates are a sacred food in much of the world but in Indiana they were just incredibly exotic. My dad brought one home once on a cold winter day. The whole family sat at our Formica kitchen table and shared it for a snack. I thought it was terribly ugly at first, until they opened it up and I saw the kernels inside which are each like a tiny ruby. I fell in love. But I didn’t like the dry seeds inside the rubies at all – so I ignominiously spit them out and was warned to be careful not to stain my clothes. Anamaria is six years older than I, and she somehow magically knew how to eat the messy fruit. But Anamaria always knew how to do everything right: she made the best Easter eggs, Halloween costumes, delicious dinners and she even taught me my numbers. I remember she taught me one to nine and then told me to start piling the numbers up – I was pissed off that there was no new cool squiggle for ten. To this day Anamaria is blessed with much more grace than I will ever master.

Much later, I learned that it was only because of her eating six pomegranate pits (as given her in the underworld) that the goddess of springtime – Persephone – must return to Hades for six months every year and we must endure dark, cold winter, without her sunshine.  Anamaria recently explained to me that according to the Bible – it was actually a pomegranate (not an apple) that Eve ate which damned her into learning shame and being kicked out of the garden of Eden with her hubby. Also a hand grenade is named after the french for pomegranate – le grenade. So those pretty little ruby gems have a lot to answer for, actually.

Still, they are delicious, aside from the pits, and I think I will bring one to our picnic. I will cut it up to share, and I will spit my seeds into the Seine. Sorry, Paris – I still ain’t got no class.