THE LOVE LANGUAGE OF CUT FRUIT
yes, that essay.
“I’m doing a balancing act with a stack of fresh fruit
in my basket. I love you. I want us both to eat well.”
- Christopher Citro, Our Beautiful Life When It’s Filled With Shrieks.
There’s often a bowl of pineapple waiting downstairs, golden chunks floating in a saltwater bath. Even right now, a plate of cherries rest at my elbow. As I pick at the stems absentmindedly, a wayward peach rolls into the back of my mind: a possible snack for tomorrow. At home, there’s always a bowl of cut fruit within arm’s reach, courtesy of my mom.
Our relationship with food and each other is like a balancing act. On one side of the scale is the desire to nurture and nourish, like a steaming meal that takes hours to prepare. Have you eaten yet today? My mom will ask. Come down for dinner, I made your favorite tonight. On the other side of the scale, there are harsh words that slice through flesh: Eat less, your life will be easier if you are beautiful. Yet even after the fiercest arguments, she would always come back to comfort me, often with a peace offering. She’d say, “don’t be mad anymore, come down and eat some fruit,” and as I sullenly bit into those carefully cut cubes, I’d mull over the conversation hidden in our exchange. In the fruit, I’d get a taste of what her earlier words really meant. I understood that amidst this conflict, lay the aching hope for me to be happy, to live a better life, and to thrive.
I once read an article titled: ‘Is There a Sixth Language of Love?’ In it, Wendy Gould posited that food, or more specifically, the preparation and serving of food, could be a universal language of love that everyone possesses from birth. I found this a curious concept. Food had never been that straightforward for me. When you are preparing food, Gould writes, “we are nourishing and nurturing, and saying to the other person, ‘You’re significant to me. I’m caring for you. I’m providing for you.’”
Thinking about it, though my mom always taught me to take care of myself, she still insists on cooking for me. If I ever peered into the fridge for an afternoon snack, she’d nudge me and say, “go do your work, I’ll bring a bowl up for you.” I’m now fairly self-sufficient around the kitchen, but it’s still my mom who has mastered the art of cutting fruit, that simple act of love. It is as though, even after we’ve grown up, there are still things our parents reserve for themselves so that they can continue to show their care. And in turn, there are still things we let our parents do for us to feel comforted and cared for — like letting them ruffle your hair, or eating the vegetables they pile onto your plate, or accepting a bowl of freshly cut fruit.
My mom sent me off to college with a rice cooker, a token of her love to bring to a place where she could no longer take care of me. In this new chapter of my life, I found myself battling with fitted sheets and going grocery shopping alone and carving out wobbly shapes in fruits that she used to slice for me. I chew thoughtfully on misshapen cubes, and think of my mom’s practiced knife slicing through flesh. I remember early afternoons in the kitchen, where she showed me how to unravel an apple’s skin into a single spiral of color. Somehow, her fruits always seemed to taste sweeter. Something I used to take for granted had been thrown into sharp relief -- and when I returned home after that first semester of college and found myself welcomed by all my favorite foods, I saw it clearly for the first time. When I was younger, a bowl of cut fruit was just that, but now I had been across the ocean and back for this taste of home.
I concluded that it was true. There is a sixth language of love, and my mom has been speaking it all this time -- I just hadn’t lived enough to understand it yet.
Shortly after I grasped the existence of this sixth love language, I was reunited with my family in Southern California due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That first week back, my mom bought a crate of pomegranates. Excited at the prospect of making juice, I wilted when remembering that the blender in our temporary home didn’t have the same strength as our old Vitamix. However, when I walked into the kitchen the next day, my mom handed me a glass of deep red pomegranate juice. Surprised, I looked up at her and saw a self-made fruit press assembled on the counter. She had painstakingly peeled open the stubborn pomegranate, put it through our weak blender, then filtered the inseparable cloud of flesh and seeds through a sieve two, three, then four times, red juice slowly trickling into the cup resting below.
“I love you, I want us both to eat well,” the juice seemed to say, as I looked at my face reflected in its surface.
In that moment, standing in the kitchen with my mom, I felt overwhelmingly loved. I realized then that it was the sacrifice and the care that went into preparing this juice -- that was the love being spoken into our kitchen. That love was my mom waiting patiently for the juice to slowly bleed through the filter. That love was my mom peeling apples for my sister and I while only allowing herself the core. Sacrificing your time for a task that nurtures someone else, saving the most tender parts of the fruit - and the day - for others, that is my mom’s love language.
A parent’s love is expressed in so many ways – in the desire to protect, to nurture, to make happy. The will to make sacrifices so that the path ahead can unfurl, bloom, and bear fruit for their child. For my mom, it is teaching me how to cook for myself, a warm gift of her love to bring wherever I go. But it is also handing me a bowl of fresh fruit in the afternoons, a quiet symbol of affection. More than sustenance, the fruit is love and comfort, preparing it a tender act of nurturing and sacrifice. My mom has made countless other sacrifices in a similar fashion, yet, she never brings it up, nor does she say that she loves me out loud. Only this – Are you hungry? Have you eaten yet? (Have I told you I love you today?)