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Like woman, like fruit
Mama Feyi, the fat black nurse with arms large enough to embrace the entire earth always says, “Woman is like a fruit. If you liken her to a fruit that best describes her qualities, she would never be a mystery to you.” As she speaks these words, an illusion of a watermelon replaces her image in my mind’s eye. The very dark round watermelon. The outer layer is tough and cannot be pierced by naked hands but when you cut through, you see, feel and taste her softness and sweetness. Like a watermelon with many seeds, mama Feyi is a woman of many words. Not words of empty consequences but words like seeds sown in the heart to birth humour.
She says there are two kinds of women like two kinds of fruit. One with the soft outer layer and flesh but has a core of stone, an avocado, mango and peach for example. This is the woman that is sweet, nice, pretty and likeable on the exterior. They are always attractive and desirable from a distance but she has a heart of stone. The other type is the fruit with a hard and rough exterior often unattractive but the exterior protects a soft, sweet and delicate interior, like the pineapple, sugarcane, etc. This is the other woman that seems tough, unbecoming and difficult but kind, beautiful and vulnerable within.
Neither is better than the other. It is a defence mechanism. Every woman has a right to protect a part of her that is most delicate and susceptible. If you are soft all over, you get squashed rather easily, the tomato. If you are hard all over, you become an object of ridicule, the coconut brain. The idea is to be balanced but very few humans partake of this perfection.
This was the only way Cecilia could analyse her mother, who reminded her of sour grapes. She was neither hard inside nor outside but she was sour all over. Like the lime and lemon are sour but gives flavour to water, they are never all bad. Every fruit has its peculiar tang. Cecilia learned to acquire the taste for sour grapes.
Mama Feyi, the fat black nurse with arms large enough to embrace the entire earth always says, “Woman is like a fruit. If you liken her to a fruit that best describes her qualities, she would never be a mystery to you.” As she speaks these words, an illusion of a watermelon replaces her image in my mind’s eye. The very dark round watermelon. The outer layer is tough and cannot be pierced by naked hands but when you cut through, you see, feel and taste her softness and sweetness. Like a watermelon with many seeds, mama Feyi is a woman of many words. Not words of empty consequences but words like seeds sown in the heart to birth humour.
She says there are two kinds of women like two kinds of fruit. One with the soft outer layer and flesh but has a core of stone, an avocado, mango and peach for example. This is the woman that is sweet, nice, pretty and likeable on the exterior. They are always attractive and desirable from a distance but she has a heart of stone. The other type is the fruit with a hard and rough exterior often unattractive but the exterior protects a soft, sweet and delicate interior, like the pineapple, sugarcane, etc. This is the other woman that seems tough, unbecoming and difficult but kind, beautiful and vulnerable within.
Neither is better than the other. It is a defence mechanism. Every woman has a right to protect a part of her that is most delicate and susceptible. If you are soft all over, you get squashed rather easily, the tomato. If you are hard all over, you become an object of ridicule, the coconut brain. The idea is to be balanced but very few humans partake of this perfection.
This was the only way Cecilia could analyse her mother, who reminded her of sour grapes. She was neither hard inside nor outside but she was sour all over. Like the lime and lemon are sour but gives flavour to water, they are never all bad. Every fruit has its peculiar tang. Cecilia learned to acquire the taste for sour grapes.
