Pomegranates are not only a delicious fruit—they are a symbol for these times.
One of my most favorite fruits in the cold season are pomegranates. As everything is dying in New Mexico, these red jewel boxes are ripening in California. I love the effort and reward of eating them, peeling back the leathery skin to reveal the ruby seeds. Each fruit contains somewhere between 600-1400 seeds, called arils. I have been making a delicious endive, radicchio, and butter lettuce salad, with pomegranate seeds, slivered rosemary almonds, and a nice lemony-garlicky-mustard vinaigrette on top.
Pomegranates were first brought to North America by the Spanish colonists beginning in the late 16th century. But pomegranates have been associated with mythology since the Phoenicians. They are symbolic of fertility, abundance, protection, and blessings. But they are also associated with death, the underworld, and funeral rights. The fruit represents life, death, and rebirth—a potent symbol for these times.
I was at a memorial for a dear friend’s father recently, and it reminded me how psychedelic the process of grief can feel. Our sense of time is reconfigured. Our sense of self dissolves. Everyday occurrences become laden with symbolic meaning.
Major life events, such as the death of a family member, are a kind of rebirth for the living—we emerge through our grief changed. We are no longer who we once were. These are thresholds. As we walk through the doorways that grief opens, our brains literally become new, reborn. Our psyche creates an “event boundary”, resetting itself for a new environment, and forgetting unnecessary information from the world we’ve left behind. This psychological phenomenon is known as the “doorway effect.”
In the myth of Persephone, she is kidnapped as a young maiden by Hades, the God of the Underworld. Her mother, Demeter, is so distraught that she creates a famine on the land—bringing in an eternal winter. Despite her attempts to escape, Persephone eats six pomegranate seeds that Hades gives her, and so she is bound to him, becomes his wife, and must return cyclically for at least half the year—thus the return of winter.
As I sit writing this, the temperature is more than 10 degrees above average. We haven’t gotten any snow yet. When I was a kid, the mountains would have already received at least a few storms. I am ready to hibernate, cozy against the dark cold nights, and yet it feels like September outside. It’s honestly quite confusing for my body and spirit.
I have been feeling a lot of climate grief lately, since the weather is so different now than when I was a kid. I worry for the big old trees in the mountains that will die without the snowpack they rely on. I worry for our streams, our fish, our own water supply. I grieve that the climate has already changed, and that we may never return to what it once was. That we must find a way to be resilient, learning to adapt to this new room, this place without the familiar and known.
While working on this week’s essay, I found a poem I had written eight years ago:
At the memorial for my friend’s dad, as the evening was winding down, I noticed a pomegranate sitting on the kitchen counter by a vase of tulips. It looked like a still life painting brought to life. I will try to take some comfort from this. Life’s strivings are ceaseless, unknowable. The unfolding is a mystery. If we sit with our grief in just the right way, it can even be delightful to feel this much love for that which we have lost. At the very least, I am grateful for pomegranates to catch my tears.
Scroll below for this week’s writing prompts!
Have you signed up for my Writing Retreat in Tuscany waitlist yet?
You don’t have to be a food writer to join!!
This retreat is for anyone who wishes to practice the craft of writing and use it as a way to gain deeper insight into themselves. We will eat, explore, share, and expand—all in a 100 year old farmhouse in the wild part of Tuscany.
The retreat will take place in the wild part of Tuscany, at Tertulia, a restored Italian farmhouse from the 1700s, nestled in the Mugello forest. Tertulia is rooted in permaculture principles, so along with writing we will also get to go foraging in the forest, visit local markets, take a cooking class together, and have an optional morning practice of yoga and meditation.
I am truly so excited about this and would love to have you join. We may also have a scholarship spot available!
Learn more and get on the waitlist here, so you have priority access once we open registration. It’s going to be a magical week!
Registration opens shortly, and in the meantime, I want to make sure you are on the waitlist because spaces will be limited!
