For many people, tangerines evoke memories of the holidays, the season they are in the grocery stores, a marker of the impending Christmas season. For me, tangerines bring about different feelings too. They bring me back to a time when the only thing I had to worry about was coloring inside the lines, and sharing my pink Barbie corvette with my sister. About every second weekend, Grandpa Bill would come and get us (and our "My Little Pony" sleepover bags) and bring us to Nana and Grandpas house for a weekend filled with board games, Cheetos (Nana always served Cheetos on a sleepover night), and stories perched high atop Grandpa's knee.
They really were the textbook example of Grandparents: we could do no wrong, and there was always room for my head tucked away in Grandpa Bill's chest. At night, after the activities had wound down, Nana would fill the bath with bubbles and Gilly and I would take turns splashing around. Then she'd wrap us in the biggest light green bath towels I've ever seen, and send us on to Grandpa, who would be sitting in his armchair, reading the paper, to get warmed up and listen to a bedtime story. In the morning, we'd lay in bed for hours, eating tangerines, chatting, and giggling. I'm sure they made the sheets sticky, and for days after our sleepovers their bed must have smelled like oranges, but neither of them ever complained.
Someone once said, "Memory is a way of holding on to the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose."
For me, it is memories like these that allow me to see the beauty in a bowl of Christmas clementines, and assure me that every year, I will stop for a minute in even the busiest of months and think about my Nana and Grandpa Bill.
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