Pears

 

People either love pears or they don’t. There is no middle ground. Little babies shiver and spit them out and rub them in their eyes with their little fists.

They know they have been tricked.

My mother used to make a little salad to go above each knife when she set the table for dinner. It had a piece of lettuce, half of a pear with a scoop of cottage cheese in the middle and a dollop of mayonnaise on the top.

Sometimes she got fancy and added paprika. Today’s children would stare and ask what in the world they were supposed to do with it.

My grandmothers bottled pears and before bottles I suspect they dried them on screens in their gardens. I bottled pears when I was a young wife and swore that when I was rich, I would never touch another one. They were so hard to peel. Some of my kids liked them but most did not.

We have two pear trees. What were we thinking ? Now and then, someone picks a pear and eats it.

Today, it was Olive. She took two respectable bites and then was perfectly willing to share. When there were no takers, she threw the pear over the fence for the horses to eat. They love pears. They don’t even care that you took a bite right out of the middle.

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