November Postcards: Gathering Sweetness Over Time

pen, paper and golden light

A flash of golden light catches my eye, encouraging me to pause and exhale, let go, letting go, breathing in deeply and releasing the day to that point. 

My life is turned upside down since my husband’s medical emergency. Such an overused descriptor but what else can you say – in pieces?

Crises don’t require the perfect word. There aren’t any. 

The days this week were counted in infinitesimal points of progress, others in blotchy ink stains across my journal. 

Week three of my November postcards, a practice of noticing what I notice

This week’s November noticing list included:

• golden, fragrant and ever-patient quince sitting in the fruit bowl waiting for me to notice their beauty, how their color deepens each day – all the sweeter for the compote to be made

• love splashed across ruins: xoxo you are loved right here, right now

• kindness noted nightly with thanks for so many blessings

notes to self

The quinces have been a constant companion, lying abandoned in the fruit bowl, golden and fragrant, patient in their waiting. Their color deepens with each passing day. It’s been weeks that I’ve been meaning to make my grandmother’s dulce de membrillo, or Spanish quince paste. 

It’s a fall ritual that I most look forward to even though it is a long and arduous task to prepare the fruit: washing the fuzz off, carefully peeling the misshapen orbs, coring them, and then placing the pectin-packed seeds and peels in cheesecloth to place in the simmering pot. Quince, a fruit formed from the most delicate and fragrant flowers, is notoriously homely and awkward, and maybe this is why I love it so much. 

I remember picking quince with my grandmother the fall I was pregnant, my sense of smell heightened from morning sickness, moving from one knobby ball to another sniffing branches like a hound – insatiable – the sugary scent, slightly citrusy, a fragrance that fills the house with the sweetness. 

I remember the crisp morning light reflecting off the yellowing leaves hiding the fruit. A freshly picked quince smells so good but they are horrid to eat raw. They taste like nothing but tongue-irritating starch and it seems miraculous that they can be stewed into such fragrant jams and compotes, juice and tea. Tummy soothing tea.

This week, walking downtown, I noticed the light casting Xs and Os across the wall at the Diocletian Baths. Misshapen tears rolled down my face like turtle eggs, the city reminding me of all the love already here, of all the blessings in a day, and I soften; I soften like the quinces lying in the fruit bowl at home that, maybe today, will bubble to life on the stovetop and fill my attic apartment with the fragrance of late fall.

fun fact: the Italian version of dulce de membrillo is called cotognata from the word for quince mela cotogna.

Like last week’s postcard, these November noticings are helping me find calm during a difficult time by just … noticing.