One of my first memories of oranges is the sound of a 1980s electric juicer on cold dark winter mornings before school. The little machine was a proud purchase from my mom, so we could have fresh juice. “It’s good for you, full of vitamin C”, she would say all the time. My nose against the wood counter, I would reach up to press the halved orange on the plastic knob, rotating back and forth to extract the juice, leaving the pulp in the perforated gutter. She would then lift the container and pour the juice into my glass. I drank it fast, it was so good, that sweet mouth puckering liquid rolling on my tongue and waking my sleepy body up.
My mom told me that as a little girl she would receive oranges, chocolate praline candy and books as gifts for Christmas. The fruit was a luxury for her parents with a modest income. I imagine their sparse dining room with a tree in the corner with just a few gifts lodged under its branches. The bright pop of orange, the feel of the dimpled skin under her little hands, her eyes filled with excitement and her mouth watering.
I forget who taught me how to peel an orange with a knife, but I still do it the same way to this day. With a sharp knife, cut through the rind without ever touching the pulp. One circle at the top, one at the bottom and four evenly spaced vertical cuts in between. Remove the top first, trying to pull the center pith with it too, a satisfying removal when successful. Then each quarter and finally the bottom. Left with the dry skin on my fingers tinted orange and the perfect peeled fruit in my palm, it is a ritual that never gets old.
When orange and chocolate come together, it’s the perfect match. My grandmother would buy candied orange sticks dipped in chocolate from a tiny bakery in Collioure, the small French town on the border of Spain where my grandfather and her spent their summers. Packed in a transparent small plastic bag stapled at the top with a thin silk black ribbon, they sat on top of the glass display, distracting me from the rest of the pastries. I would silently pray that my grandmother would buy a bag, adding to the daily bread and necessities. I think my eyes spoke for themselves and sometimes I got lucky. On our walk home up the hill, I would be allowed to have one or two, biting into the thin chocolate layer to get to the sweet bright gooey orange.
From France, we moved to Milan, Italy when I was seven years old. Pasta became my daily lunch at the school cafeteria, as well as orange slices for dessert. Beyond the usual games of exchanging colorful retainers or screaming when someone dropped their tray, the leftover rind inevitably ended in our mouths, tucked between our lips and teeth to reveal an orange smile. We all broke into uncontrollable giggles until we spit them out.
One winter we went to the Villa Medici on the hills surrounding Rome. Ten year old me in green corduroy pants, white cotton collared shirt and a fresh daisy crown on my head, couldn’t believe anyone could live there, it was a fable. The Borghese gardens surrounded the old buildings, fountains trickling in the sun, voluptuous female statues and orange trees in full bloom. Could I have a life like that, where I could step out of my enchanting home and go for a walk to smell the scented blossoms? That is also when I discovered that oranges grow in winter into spring and not summer as juice cartons with big sunshine logos always made me believe.
My mom, who always loved perfumes and never left the house without a scent in her neck, took me to the Santa Maria Novella pharmacy in Florence, located in a church across from the railway station. In 1614 Friar Angiolo Marchissi created the Acqua di Santa Maria Novella, an elixir to be diluted in a glass of water containing essential oils of aromatic plants. The old and woodsy place definitely called for reverence, glass cabinets displaying miracle ointments and precious perfumes coming from recipes of ancient times. The scent of orange blossom coming out in a spritz from the glass bottle, just a little bit green and absolutely bright, immediately transported me to a blindingly sunny day in an orchard.
Years later, as I started college in Paris, mom got a job in Marrakech. I helped her move and we drove South to Sete to put her car on a ferry to cross the strait of Gibraltar. After a night under the stars and in the first light of day, we arrived at the edge of the African continent and we saw Tangier glowing in white splendor on the red coast. The life in the riad where she lived in the medina all revolved around its central courtyard, where an orange tree grew next to a little fountain. The scent of orange blossom and the shade created a mood of reprieve from the harsh desert heat. Meals often ended with a cafe blanc, a few drops of orange blossom in hot water to help with digestion. The precious elixir was often stored in reused mineral water plastic bottles stripped of their labels. When we ventured out of the house for a walk around the city, we often ended up at the carts on the Jem El Fna Square to drink an ice cold freshly squeezed orange juice served in hand blown cerulean glasses.
In my twenties I moved to Los Angeles on a whim. During a winter road trip to Ojai a few hours North, the intoxicating smell of orange blossom rushed through my open car windows and I instantly fell in love with the small magical valley. Under the pink Topatopa mountains, the endless rows of deep green citrus trees heavy with golden fruit went by like a psychedelic vision. I felt free, a camera and a notebook on the passenger seat, my heart was wide open to all the possibilities of this big country that I wanted to explore. I inhaled the scent deeply over and over, feeling all the memories rushing back in flashes and new ones in the making.
Here I am now, still where the oranges are. My neighbor brought a box full of them the other day, his tree is so heavy that he has to keep giving fruit away or it will go bad. I went to the Santa Monica Farmers Market the other day with my husband, where the air smells like the ocean and the stands crawl under mounds of orange fruit that go by sumo, cara cara, navel, and even blood. My three year old son found a beautifully rotten orange on the ground of a tree nursery recently and begged to bring it home. It looked like a mossy stone. We followed the bees from flower to flower, their legs heavy with pollen as he exclaimed “honey!” over and over. As I write all this my hand reaches for a slice of orange in a bowl of pecans and dates as I sit on my deck in the morning winter sun.
