sweet and sour

Blogging is so strange. I mean, who reads these things? Honestly this is more for myself than anything, to have some place I can write out my thoughts about God and love and all those good things. Thinking about readers makes me kind of nervous. Like I need to proofread a million times, or just start over. You know, "you are your biggest critic." Starting this blog was something that's been on my to-do list for a while, and then I remembered all my failed blogging attempts throughout my life, including "livejournal" and "xanga" and other obscure sites. I guess it was the trendy thing to do in high school, to post about all the "hardships" you go through as a teenager with a good family, good friends, a great school, and everything you ever needed. Thank God high school is over, and thank God those "journal entries" are lost in cyberspace. So I think this time around my blogging experience will be a refreshing one. However, I'd like to pay homage to my previous blog by copy-pasting the last xanga entry. Because I like it. And I'd like my blog to be filled with things I like. So until the next night I'm up at 12:46 AM and have some creative writing spark, here's to grapefruit.

February 26, 2007

Eating grapefruit always reminds me of my dead grandmother. Not the fact that she is dead, but because she probably ate grapefruit every morning of her life. And every morning for two weeks, every summer of my life, I ate grapefruit. It definitely was not my favorite thing, but I ate it anyway because you could never say no to my 90-something year old grandma with that sweet voice. Almost five years later, I find myself with a passion for grapefruit. Today I spent about 10 minutes of my afternoon cutting the grapefruit, each individual triangle piece, and digging it out with a spoon and then drinking the juice. While I was enjoying this obnoxious amount of effort and time spent on a fruit, I got this desire in my head to tell my grandma how much I liked grapefruit. I wanted to thank her for the 10 minutes she spent every morning cutting up a grapefruit for my brother and I. I wanted to ask her if she could send me one of those special grapefruit spoons. I'm wanting all this, while I know fully well that she is gone and has been for a while, and then I start thinking about death, and how inconvenient it is. I mean, of course it is utterly painful and lonely and lifeless to deal with the death of someone you love, but when that passes, it's just so inconvenient. I want to hear all of my grandpa's submarine stories and hear about what my mom was like when she was a little girl, but I can't, and I'll never know any of that from his perspective. I want to tell my grandpa I'm growing tomatoes because he is probably the only person I know who would be excited about that. I want at least one of my grandparents to be at my wedding. This won't happen, and it's not worth crying over, but it is so inconvenient. 
So while this has taken a slightly selfish and disappointing turn, I then started thinking about how short life is. We are just dust, that is blown into for life, and then we crumble. And it happens so fast. We're here, and we're not. I can't help but think about what the heck I'm doing while God has given me this one chance at life on earth. After that it's eternal, but you get this one, set apart time to be apart of God's huge mystery. I know people say try to "live life to the fullest." I know it doesn't mean to succeed financially, I don't think it means to run around in a meadow every day of your life, although I might, if I had one next to my apartment, and it doesn't mean to stay incredibly busy all the time so you don't miss anything. So I realize that the fact that I just spent 10 minutes cutting a grapefruit was perfect. It was perfectly spent time. Sitting on my balcony for a while, staring at the swamp I live next to and talking to God is perfectly spent time. Reflecting on the fact that God gave us this day to enjoy - that is perfect.