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2002-02-05 - 7:04 a.m.

BRING ON THE ORANGES

Oranges in the refrigerator. Oranges in a bag on the floor. More oranges than casual eating can handle. More oranges than can be used in a reasonable amount of fruit salad. Yet the oranges keep coming and we keep accepting them. We�re looking for a good place to donate some of them. Stopping the oranges is not an option.

To me, the oranges are just oranges: round, sweet, juicy, and, well, orange. Some of them have the cute little bellybutton-shaped growths that give navel oranges their name. My children won�t even eat them, most likely because they are fruit and fruit is a food category only slightly more acceptable than the category of vegetable. But, like them or not, they are oranges.

To my elderly neighbor though, the oranges are dignity, gratitude, communication, and neighborliness. They are connection. As she�s grown older and her hearing has gotten worse, her English, which never was very fluent, has deteriorated. We check on her if we haven�t seen her, shovel her walk, wave, and smile and nod when she talks to us even when the only words we are sure we understand are �good son Florida, rotten son here.� The oranges are a thank you for the shoveling and a reason to stop by and tell us, often with hand gestures, how much the kids have grown and how pretty she thinks they are.

The girls, who have understood for a long time that it is their job to be remarked over in words they can�t understand, have started taking on the responsibility too. Last snowfall, it was Kat, not me, who shoveled out her driveway and salted it down. The time before, Day-Hay didn�t help with any shoveling, not ours and not Mrs. C�s, but she called out, �Did you remember to do Mrs. C�s?� as we walked in the door. (Day-Hay had a cold and therefore reasonably was excused from the work part that day.)

They also have stopped avoiding answering the door when they know it is Mrs. C. and her oranges. Day-Hay, in particular, did not realize for a long time that no one else really understood what Mrs. C. was saying either. She therefore avoided getting into what passes for a conversation with Mrs. C. But Day-Hay is growing up and she now smiles and nods and thanks Mrs. C. for the oranges.

Earlier, I said that the oranges were just oranges to me. Actually, I hope they are more than that. I hope they are a lesson to my children in caring, in doing the small things, the right things, that you will never get service project points for, and in receiving as a way of giving. I particularly hope that they are a lesson in receiving. We spend a lot of time teaching children to give because giving comes less naturally than receiving but we often seem to miss teaching one of the most important lessons about receiving.

Sometimes, receiving can be a gift as much as giving ever is. It�s easy to show annoyance or not much of anything when you receive a gift that is, in a way, a nuisance. Receiving graciously, not because you need what�s being given and not because you necessarily want what�s given but because it needs to be given, is a loving act that all too few of us remember how to perform. I want my children to be able to do it.

Someday, and I�m sure it will be all too soon, the oranges will stop coming. I�ll regain a refrigerator but no matter how much I put in it then, it will seem a bit empty. For now, bring on the oranges.

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