The Clementine Chronicles

The morning rite: one seedless succulent clementine on the tabletop, on the wood portion, near the slate. Sit in high-backed chair. Steaming black tea, half and half, no sugar. Heidelberg Cracked Wheat, toasted, three slices. All three with butter. One with Bonne Maman Red Raspberry Preserves, French. Clementine, Algerian. The Clementine Challenge: peel it uninterrupted, unimpeded in one fell swoop, one unbroken peel. Has yet to happen. Its taste less acidic than the typical, larger orange; its size, small; its nine morsels edible. (Nine edible portions? Sometimes, for example, ten. And if nine, here's a mathematical conundrum: when I break the sphere in half, 50 percent, how do I get two equal halves [4.5?] without splitting one morsel in half, squirtiness and all?  The peeling: paper towel underneath in case of juice release. Aren't polishes for wood citrus-y? The first challenge is the start. To puncture, to break through its skin without squirt or puddle. Skinny dipping. Take a fingernail to break the barrier. Pierce it. Then curl, roll, peel, delicately. Okay, so the disrobing is interrupted. Breakage. It won't be one exciting unpeeling with a presto! ending. Nevertheless, when all is said and done, what, six segments of peeled skin which, if fitted together, comprise a fruitful Rorschach gestalt structure. Four or five on an exceptionally good skin-spin cycle. Is one perfect Pauline peel possible? Who can say? Then, a reversal: the inability to puncture, to get things started. Is it because of closely clipped fingernails? A difference in the batch of clementines? Temperature or humidity? Try a small cut with a knife. Bleeding of clementine juice (not blood orange's). Droplets on the tabletop's wood, the paper towel yellowed, urine-colored yet still brightly and refreshingly citric. The worse wound: the whole peeling venture has run amok! Portions cleaved with skin intact. Take the fruitflesh to mouth and peel that way. So unaesthetic. So sloppy, drippy, and skill-less. Such anarchy. What happened? Who knows. But the next morning, after the words up to this point, a refreshed peeling venture. Softly, with pressure, pick at the outer layer of the outer layer. As if performing a patient surficial scraping. Indentation. Breach. And then, ah, the most exquisite peel-curl yet: inches long, liberated from the sphere, fragrancing the morning air. Five peeled-skin segments but really four if the crumb-sized bit is not counted; three if the large-crumb-sized bit is discounted. Mostly one, an elongated scroll, a clementined unfurling in all its clement mercy. Maybe it was the switch to Smuckers. Most likely the recast attention afforded from the previous draft, the one that had ended with "What happened?" And did anyone perchance mention the pruriently pleasing uncleaving of the crescent sections of edible fruit, a secret, quiet, and delicate undertaking requiring the dexterity of a surgeon, a lover's tender patience? 

promises, promises

We all make promises, don't we? "All" is extreme. Let's say that many of us have made a promise or two at some time or another. In some Christian traditions, we make a promise of faithfulness as infants. The promises are made on our behalf since even in that tradition it is acknowledged that a newborn, an infant, or a toddler is incapable of making any sort of valid promise. When I became an Episcopalian, arising from the birth of my third child ("just bring the baby; we'll baptize it"), I came enamored of a bit of wiggle room in the Rite of Baptism. The presider, such as a priest, asks the baby a series of questions as part of the baptismal covenant, the agreement that incorporates a series of faith-related promises. The congregation answers for the child, saying: "I will, with God's help." Granted, many readers will find the whole enactment surreal, even Monty Python-ish. For others, they proceed with a voluntary dollop of suspended disbelief. (Did you know the phrase comes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, he of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner? He was writing in 1817, advocating for fantastic elements in poetry: "willing suspension of disbelief.") As for our congregants making promises for a child, we might describe their surrogate promises as willing affirmations of belief in an aura of suspended disbelief. Something like that. "I will, with God's help." To me, the vow was refreshingly human. Maybe I'm the only one who heard it this way, but I felt it served as an asterisk that pleaded: "I will, but God, help me, because this is a tall order; I may not be able to keep this vow; in fact, on my own I know I can't. So help me out."

Promises.

The most notable and common promises are the ones that people make when they get married. Traditional marriage vows in Western societies tend to be just that: vows. Promises. We publicly promise to love and cherish each other, whether rich or poor, sick or well, "till death do us part." Civil ceremonies are light on promises and heavy on legal practicality declaring that each party is not still married to someone else and is free to marry.

The divorce rate serves as its own comment regarding marital promises. As time goes on, some of us revisit, revise, or reconsider those promises in the light of living history. The broken promises spectrum can run from violence and abuse to unfaithfulness to mental illness to simple incompatibility. A skeptic or a critic might say a promise is a promise; breaking it comes from making an excuse. Being twice divorced, I recuse myself from further comment. No judgment here.

But you have to wonder: Does a promise carry any weight in this day and age? Has the notion of a promise lost all gravitas?

We assume that politicians of all stripes break their promises. We accept it as a given.

"I promise I'll call you or text you when I get there." Do you believe it?

"I promise I'll be on time." Depending on personal history and personality, you recalculate. I, for one, tend to run late. It's another topic for another time. I'm working on it. I've explored the reasons for it. I'm getting better about it, or think I am. Other people are the judge of that. Knowing this about myself, I don't promise on-time-ness without some seriousness. I don't want to erode the fragile credibility I have, if any, in this arena.

"I'll call you or text you. I promise."

After a first date, any promise from either party is fraught with doubt and healthy skepticism. If "promise" is invoked, it becomes a test.

Promissory notes legally bind one to a promise. You have no choice but to keep the promise, or else you face unavoidable consequences.

"I promise I'll pay you back on Tuesday."

"The check is in the mail. I promise."

"I promise you, this won't hurt."

"I promise not to . . . "

"On my way." "OMW." Please. That's a promise to promise to promise to walk out the door, maybe, sort of, pretty soon.

The etymology of the word "promise" offers some wiggle room of its own. If you go back deeply enough to its Latin origins, to its neuter past participle and beyond, the word, more or less, means: to release, let go, send, or throw in front of or before. 

See? Even the word "promise" throws some doubt on its own fulfillment or expectation. It lets go and releases even as it binds.

And yet I can't promise you this isn't a richly embroidered rationalization.