The Pomegranate - La Granada

Recuperando in Apaseo el Alto, Guanajuato. 

The hernia operation was performed by a childhood friend who became a surgeon.

And as I lay here, being cared for in the town where I spent so much of my childhood, I’m appreciative of something that may sound simple at first.

Pomegranate- en español, la granada.

Apaseo el Alto: huertas (orchards), fruit trees, irrigation, family memory, and land that still produces. When I was growing up, huertas were everywhere. They were part of the landscape and part of the town’s identity.

Even now, after decades of new homes, streets, and construction, I am surprised by how many huertas still remain. Some are just a few blocks from where I am recovering. You see walls, gates, houses, and then suddenly there they are: las huertas, las granadas. 

La granada. 

You do not just grab it and eat it quickly. You have to open it…and slow down.

You have to get through the thick outer skin, and then inside there are hundreds of small red arils, each one carrying juice, seed, sweetness, tartness, color, and texture.

It is a fruit that makes you pay attention.

The taste is hard to describe in one word. It can be sweet, but not flat sweet. It has brightness. It has a little acidity. It wakes up the mouth. It feels fresh, almost festive, but also earthy because it came from a tree that took its time.

And then there is the part I had almost forgotten: the granada is not only beautiful, it is nourishing.

Those little red arils carry fiber, vitamin C, potassium, folate, and antioxidants. It is a lot of nourishment packed into something so small.

The arils give you something the juice does not fully give you: the fiber of the fruit itself. There is something fitting about that too. The whole fruit asks you to slow down, open it, separate it, and receive it piece by piece.

What strikes me is not only the nutrition.

It is the paciencia behind it.

A pomegranate tree does not produce in a rush. It takes time to establish. It takes seasons. It takes pruning, water, soil, sun, care, and harvest.

The fruit itself grows slowly from flower to full fruit over months.

By the time you open a pomegranate, you are not just opening fruit. You are opening la evidencia del tiempo.

Maybe that is why I am noticing it now. I am recovering, and my body is also asking for patience. No rushing. No forcing. Just care, time, and the slow evidence of healing.

I find myself thinking about this as I recover in the wee hours de la mañana.

Huertas, semillas, esfuerzo, cosechas…

There may be a family, a small producer, an orchard, a truck, a market, and a long journey before that fruit ever reaches someone’s kitchen.

And here I am, in a friggin’ hospital gown proud and grounded because Apaseo, town of my childhood, has presence and a voice through its fruits of labor…la granada.

My Auténtico Self™

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