This is the first in a series of posts I’m calling “Dishes of My Life,” in which I reflect on my past through the lens of food.
My grandfather was thin and sinewy, built like a piece of driftwood. Skin wrinkled and spotted and the color of terra cotta—he spent so much time baking in the sun. His hair was woolly, tightly curled, copper-colored despite his age. He had a merry laugh and wore silver-rimmed glasses.
My grandfather biked every day for miles in colorful spandex and a bright yellow helmet. Sometimes he would show up to our house on his bike, drenched in sweat, “just to visit.” I looked it up just now—it’s a sixteen-mile ride. And he’d usually just accept a glass of water, say hi to everyone, and then set off back home.
My grandfather wasn’t actually my grandfather. He was technically my step-grandfather—my stepmother’s father—but we always called him Grandpa C. My brother and I were at their house a lot in the summer, since my grandparents had a pool, and for two young teens there was no better way to while away the sun-soaked hours. I remember finally emerging from the pool in the evenings and feeling like the chlorine water had seeped into my bones somehow, my fingers wrinkled beyond recognition, drowsy from moving my limbs all day. Swaddling myself in a thin towel, saying my exhausted goodbyes, and watching the streetlamps flick on from the backseat of my dad’s car.
On especially hot days, Grandpa C sometimes waited until everyone was done swimming and jumped in the pool at the end of the day in his little speedo. He’d swim for a minute, then get out, shaking his head like a dog to dry off. I’d watch him from up on the deck as I ate popsicles.
There was something special in those summer nights. It’s not just nostalgia; I knew it then, too. I could feel it in the warmth of the concrete walkway around the pool even after the air had turned dark and chilly.
In the backyard, Grandpa C kept four fig trees, plus a garden behind the pool where he grew cucumbers, eggplants, zucchini, tomatoes, peppers, and peas. He was constantly gardening: mulching around trees, trimming bushes, training climbing vines. Waiting until the sun started to wane before watering the plants. Sprinkling hair trimmings (from the barbershop he owned) around the hostas so the deer wouldn’t eat them. His garden grew prolifically. But we all knew the fig trees were his babies. They were around nine feet tall, with those broad green leaves shaped like melting cellos, and in the spring you’d start to see little green nubs start to form among them. In winter, he wrapped them in burlap and thick twine to protect from the cold. Fig trees are Mediterranean, like Grandpa C—he was born and raised in Sicily and immigrated to the U.S. as a young man. He didn’t like winters either.
The trees fruited every year, but for some reason I only have one memory of actually eating the figs. Early summer, June probably. Afternoon with the sun high and bright in the sky, drying off temporarily on the white plastic lounge chairs by the pool. Grandpa C was up on a ladder, his head hidden among the leaves.
He came up to me, holding a plastic grocery bag. “The figs are beautiful,” he said. “Have one.” And he produced a purplish-green fig, a bit bigger than a golf ball.
“I just bite into it?” I’d never had one before. I didn’t know if I had to peel it or what.
He nodded, and demonstrated. I bit into mine, the skin a bit thicker than a plum, and I immediately tasted the distinctive flesh, rum-sweet and warm from the sun. Like honey and raisins and warm jelly.
I went to the store today. It’s funny, living in a Latin neighborhood, the things you can find versus the things you can’t: I could run out and return in ten minutes with achiote, blue corn flour, horchata mix, conchas, and Malta. But no figs. It’s been years now since I’ve had a fresh one. It feels like forever since I’ve swam in a pool.
I was talking to someone a while back. She told me about how her grandmother kept a fig tree in her backyard in Brooklyn, and they used the fruit to make jam every year. The tree was cut down to make room for more buildings, but luckily they kept a clipping, so part of it still grows in a new place. I told her about my grandfather and his fig trees—and how I lost touch with him when I cut off contact with my dad. “I wonder where he is now,” I said.
“Hopefully sitting in the sun with a big bag of fresh figs,” she replied.
That’s all I want for him.
prolixity 