Love Fruit

I wake, shivering in the wintry morning chill and craving tangerines. I reach for the bedside clock to check the time, snuggle deeper into the covers and curl the cat closer to me. “Be a love, Wasabi, and go fetch and peel me a tangerine,” I whisper in her furred ear. “You don’t have to actually feed it to me – just go and bring me one, okay?” Wasabi ignores me. Just as well. I wouldn’t actually have time to wait for her to peel the fruit, because I’m already running late for my trip to the city with Zoe.

 

“I’ve made appointments for us to have our charts read,” Zoe announced a couple of weeks earlier. “My Solstice gift to you.”

 

“Aw, c’mon, Zoe,” I said. “You know I don’t believe in astrology. Although we are approaching my Saturn return, and with Uranus hanging out in my 12^th house and the recent grand cross of Jupiter, Venus, Uranus and Pluto, it would be interesting to know what’s up. In a totally casual way of course.”

 

“Oh yes. Totally casual. Of course,” said Zoe.

 

I’m due at Zoe’s in an hour now. Braving the cold beyond the comforters, I get out of bed and stop by the kitchen for a tangerine before I hop into a steaming shower. But there are none left, so my craving will have to wait. I scribble TANGERINES – LOTS! at the top of my running shopping list. It’s time.

 

“There’s the cold that makes me want to pull out the wool sweaters – which means I’m ready for autumn,” I explain to Zoe on the drive up to San Francisco, “And then there’s the cold that makes me crave tangerines – which means I’m ready for winter and cocooning and fires and candlelight and the season’s celebrations.”

 

“Interesting insight into the weird little mind of our Wench,” says Zoe. “But you do make a certain odd sense. And hey, I could go for a tangerine or two. I need the vitamin C.”

 

After taking the 280 up to the city, we find parking at 7^th near Irving and make our way down the sidewalk along with the neighborhood’s Saturday morning crowd. We pass clothing boutiques, a flower shop with branches of bright holly berries in galvanized steel pails outside, and a couple of cafés that are doing brisk business, as evidenced by the steamed windows. Zoe navigates us to a old Victorian, painted purple with teal and yellow trim, and we climb deep steps to ring the buzzer near a massive oak door, which is swung open a half minute later by an tall, older man sporting multiple piercings (ear, nose, lip and brow) and a trim goatee and who introduces himself as Perry, our astrologer.

 

Perry leads us upstairs to a sitting room with a large bay window that overlooks the busy intersection and dishes up a big slice of the sky over the rooftops of the houses across the street. The room is warm and filled with sunlight and plants, and amidst fragrant cedar greenery on a battered but elegant square mahogany coffee table, I spot a willow basket of tangerines. Oooo. Just one . . .

 

“So who wants to go first?”  asks Perry.

 

 “You first,” says Zoe, nodding at me. I cast a wistful glance at the tangerines and follow Perry into a cozy little kitchen at the back of the house. He offers me a mug of tea and a seat at his table.

 

“Your chart,” begins Perry, “is interesting.”

 

“I’ll bet you say that to everyone.”

 

“True. I do. And I mean it. But you’ve had Jupiter with all its beneficence in your sign since last December. “

 

“Yeah. That’s right. It was supposed to be my lucky year.”

 

Perry cocks his head at my ironic tone. “And it wasn’t?”

 

“Well,” I say. “I would characterize it as a year of unexpected disruption and change. And that would be me being nice.”

 

“But imagine if you didn’t have Jupiter as a mitigating factor.”

 

“I can’t imagine.” I say. I mean, honestly. I can’t.

 

The reading is more of a conversation, really, and Perry’s insights are pretty typical; nothing that I haven’t come across in the standard guides to the astrological signs. But his metaphors are colorful and quixotic – he likens me at points in our discussion to a dragon, a tiger, and an avocado – and his use of slang (“Neptune in your 10^th crib is creating some illusions of having ‘mad bank’ ”), is, well, intriguing. I enjoy watching his facial expressions and the way he uses his hands as he talks.

 

As the half hour draws to a close, Perry asks if I have any burning questions.

 

“This love and relationship thing. Will I ever get it right?” I toss this one out casually.

 

“Aren’t you?” Perry asks.

 

“Answering a question with a question – geez, man, you sound like my therapist,” I say.

 

Perry turns back to my chart. “Well, sweetheart, here’s the deal. Pluto will be in your sign for the next 15 years. There’s a lot of change ahead for you. Deep change, from the inside out. Your ideas of traditional institutions – religion and spirituality, romantic partnership or marriage, friendship, work arrangements, all of your structures – they will be steadily and completely transformed over the next decade and a half. Who knows what take on all of this you’ll end up with in a year, two years, five years, 15 years from now?”

 

He continues. “Nonetheless, I am surprised by your question. Given your chart, I would have imagined an abundance of love in your life this year.” He looks at me quizzically. I look steadily back at him.

 

“Hmmm,” he says, and for a moment his eyes bore into mine. “Ms. Wench. What I would say to you, the one thing I would encourage you to remember is this: Enjoy the moments of the love.”

 

And whether that’s Perry’s advice as my astrologer or as a person who’s been on this planet a lot longer than I have, I don’t ask.

 

Perry escorts me back to the sitting room and tells me to make myself comfortable and, catching me eyeing the basket of fruit, invites me to help myself. As Zoe follows him for her turn in the kitchen, I curl up in an overstuffed chair near the coffee table and reach for my first tangerine of winter.

 

I tear the peel, and the zesty citrus mist that hits my nose springs the lock on a memory. It’s one of a year ago, when I was with Aaron. It was a cold December night, and I lay, naked and warm, nestled against him in the soft, thick blankets of his bed. He kissed my neck and then pulled away. “Stay here. I’ll be back,” he said. I rested, happy and relaxed in the candlelight, and a few minutes later, Aaron returned, carrying a cobalt blue plate bearing two peeled and sectioned tangerines. He held the plate out to me, smiling at my delight. I took it and offered him a piece of the fruit. “No,” he said. “I’m fine. I know you get hungry though, afterward.” I laughed and ate the tangerines as he watched me, and it felt almost more intimate than making love. I feel seen and known, I remember thinking.

 

It is a sweet sad memory; two weeks later Aaron told me he was in love with me but wasn’t ready for a serious relationship so soon out of his marriage, and so we parted company. And I tried to forget. And why? If I think, as Perry suggests, of the moments, it really doesn’t matter what happened next; in that moment, there was love.

 

In that moment and what others? I wonder, as I reach for a second tangerine. And suddenly, as if they’d just been waiting for the right invitation, memories crowd my mind: Roxanne’s soulful voice and the rapt attention of our friends around the table as she sang for Harrison and me at our joint birthday celebration early in the year. Doc’s short, throaty hum of pleasure as we sat, close and companionable, in the dark movie theatre one rainy afternoon, his large, warm hand curled around mine. Jake nagging Kate to take the big flashlight for protection as we headed out for one of our night walk-talks and bonding, and Kate and I laughing when Kate rolled her eyes and said, “Sometimes my old lady can be a real drag.” Chris gazing steadily at me with her kind eyes and asking over our Friday breakfasts, every time, “So how are you, really?” Rose and I happy and silly and complimenting each other on how lovely we looked when we dressed up for one of our ironically dubbed “Fall (as in Autumn) of Romance” outings.

 

To mind come Harrison’s late night, early morning calls, just to talk, just because. George and Lucy at my door, with wide grins and warm hugs: “Hi, Harry’s Mom! Wanna watch a movie?” Cyn and I at dinner, celebrating our friendship of 15 years and recounting all the ways in which we’ve seen each other grow. ZJ and I walking and talking and cracking jokes and cackling and raising margaritas to toast our great good fortune of discovering each other as we did. My rambling Saturday morning phone calls with my sister Mare and her voicemail messages to me, sung to Abba tunes; the email and phone calls with my sister Lou. Standing in the warm kitchen of my parents’ house, drinking tea and talking with my mother, the smell of dad’s bread baking for our dinner. Movie nights and board games and wine and mentoring with Libby. Hikes and laughs and insights shared with Colleen. Goodwill hunts with Joanne. Quips and confidences exchanged over IM with Stu and Vanessa, Matt and Stefanie. Personal and philosophical insights shared in correspondences with Spence, Bill and Hitoshi. Doc’s playful and intimate notes, greeting me, “Dear Word Wench . . . “ All of these memories come.

 

Enjoy the moments of the love. With some, these moments add up to relationships of duration, ever-evolving connection, as they do with Harrison, with Kate and Jake, with Mare; and as they are with Chaika, Zoe, Sydney, Art, Horst. With others – the thoughtful and funny Jewish-Buddhist lawyer at the sushi bar in Vegas; the sincere young servicewoman on the flight to Newark on her way to Iraq; once-close colleagues and friends; Aaron; Doc -  they are, perhaps, instances of  connection within a finite period. Yet all deepen my appreciation for the taste of love fruit.

 

I peel and eat a third and last tangerine, lingering on each bite of the bittersweet, stomach and heart approaching full.

 

“Sooooooo. . . what did you think?” asks Zoe as we head home, later, after stopping into a little grocery store where I buy a five pound bag of tangerines.

 

“It was enlightening, Zo,” I say. “A great gift. Thank you very much.”

 

“You’re welcome,” says Zoe. “Happy Solstice, Wench.”

 

“And to you too, love,” I say, as I hand her a tangerine.

 

The Word Wench weblog is a fictional memoir, and any resemblance to any person living or dead (you know who you are!) is purely coincidental. Installments are posted at whim, so please subscribe to RSS feed to read the latest, or join the WW mailing list by sending a SUBSCRIBE message to TheWordWench@gmail.com

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Tags: astrology, enjoy the moments of the love, Fictional Memoir, friendship, love, Personal, solstice, the Word Wench, Word Wench