How to Peel an Orange--A Father's Day Tribute

From as early as I can remember my dad made a ritual of peeling an orange. He would get an orange and a paper towel from the kitchen, sit down at the table and pull out his old, yellowed bone handle knife. He would turn the orange over so that the stem bud was on top, then carefully insert the knife. He slowly drew a pencil straight line all the way around the orange, ending again at the stem bud. Then he turned the orange at a 45 degree angle and began again--starting at the stem bud, always intersecting the first line exactly at the bottom of the orange, and ending again at the stem bud. Thus he had four quarters, and he would carefully peel back each quarter, leaving them on the paper towel.

I was always amazed by the fact that he never punctured the meat of the orange. Never. Every now and then he would remind me that he had learned this technique from his father, who had learned it from HIS father. That made me feel important as I sat there watching him, bare feet swinging under the table, learning a lesson from my forefathers. I know many people probably quarter their oranges when they peel them. But there was something special about how those lines always intersected at the dot on the bottom, and about the way he never pierced the meat.

My father passed away during a cold January night, and we held the funeral in a deep snow. When my mother and sister and I went through his things, I received that old yellow bone handled knife. Through that winter I carried the knife in my coat pocket, and every now and then I would reach in and clasp that knife. The weight of it was comforting somehow.

I still try to master his method of peeling an orange. I have the intersecting lines down right, but I still sometimes puncture the orange meat. But that's the way it is with generations, I guess. I'll try and try, and someday maybe I'll get it right. Then when I'm too old to safely hold a knife, maybe the next generation will be at it, doing their best to peel an orange with perfectly intersected lines, without puncturing the meat.