Pomegranates and Memories

I’ve posted another little essay over on Substack; I’ve titled it “Pomegranates and Memories,” and if you haven’t popped over to read it yet, I’d love to see you there. Here’s the link, and here’s a short excerpt:

I must have been eight or nine when my mother first introduced my siblings and me to this exotic fruit. I can’t imagine how much it would have cost back in the early 60s, but I know Mom was stretching dollars and pinching pennies to feed what would then have been eight or nine of us kids. We used to be sent, myself and the next three oldest, when we were perhaps 10 or 12, to the Safeway grocery store up on Kingsway — 12th Street as it was, more accurately, until it crossed the border to the next municipality on the way to Vancouver.

Clutching the coupons Mom had clipped from the weekly flyer, we’d each load up with the current loss-leader: “7 cans for a dollar” of Pacific Evaporated Milk or “7 pounds for a dollar” of Dalewood Margarine. Choosing cashiers as strategically as we could, we’d lay out our spoils and hand over the coupon and a dollar bill or sweaty handful of coins, hoping the cashier wouldn’t have noticed our sibling on a similar mission three tills over. Occasionally, one of us would be admonished for trying to circumvent the store policy of one coupon redemption per family. Cringe. . . .

So the pomegranate was an extravagance, a splurge. It was also, I can see now, an expression of my mother’s creative, aesthetic, curious self — a manifestation of the inspiring teacher she must have been for those few years before she stayed home to raise us — that she gathered us around that chrome and arborite table to cut through the oddly leathery, red skin to reveal the membraned compartments within, each a treasury of juicy rubies. I doubt we could have had more than a tablespoon or two each, and it seems unlikely that the splurge would have been repeated much more than, perhaps, annually.

The Substack post also includes a couple of sketches, a short video taken in Marrakech, and descriptions of visits to a famous work of art inspired by pomegranate mythology . . .

I’ll admit that I have some misgivings about Substack, particularly its busy-ness and its emphasis on growth. But on the other hand, that emphasis gives my writing the potential of a wider audience and the platform takes care of all the technical hosting and subscription mailing that I currently pay for. As well, it hosts a plethora of excellent writers on a wide variety of topics. I understand that you may have reservations about adding another platform to your screentime, and I thank you for being patient with my explorations in this transition time.

Again, I’d love to have you stop by to read my latest Substack post. Even better if you’re inspired to add a comment to the conversation; I appreciate that Substack has incorporated the Heart/Like feature, which lets me know when, and how much, an essay does or does not resonate with readers.

I know some of you have found it difficult or impossible to leave comments or “like,” — as I mentioned in an earlier post, my husband had the same problem until he discovered that he needed to click on the circle to the left of his name in the Comment box. Clicking on the circle brought up the Reply button, and once he clicked on that, the comment posted. I hope that works for you as well.

And if you can’t comment there, you can always leave a comment here.

Ciao for now,

xo,

f