07/30/2026
I peeled the fat orange in the dark. The coffee was brewing, and I had some time on my hands.
I marveled at the ease of the peel, feeling the overwhelming desire to accept the unspoken challenge to remove the skin in one single uninterrupted piece.
Why that matters, I don't know. But it's the little successes in life that make it worth living.
Getting up early, at 0400, I'd already sent Ellie out the door to peruse the property. From the kitchen window, I could see the motion-sensing solar lights on the woodline kick in, indicating that the black dog was making her way along the familiar path that she travels on most every comfort break. The lights, cheap and Chinesium, have worked for nearly two years now. I pondered the thought that I'd purchased a lot of things that didn't work and cost me a whole lot more money.
I'm not sure that Ellie loves having the lights announce her entry into the edge of the forest. I have three of them, mounted low on the trees, spaced far apart, one of them on the opposite side of the yard, which catches her trying to sneak off to the neighbor's house every now and then.
She hates it when I shout out into the dark that she should come back inside. She doesn't press her luck this morning; the light on the maple to the right doesn't illuminate, and I can hear her feet crushing the dry grass as she exits the darkness at a steady trot. She's clearly heard the cup and a half of dry kibble hitting the plastic surface of her slow-down bowl.
Once inside, she sees the orange in my hand. I give her one segment, and it's gone before she can even give her molars a chance to enjoy it. She waits for me to give her a nod toward the dish.
I am constantly perplexed that she obeys me regarding waiting to eat. It's another little success that I cling to. After all, it would have taken some world-class hollering to get her to come inside if she'd already decided to head to the neighbors to check on their dog, most likely snoring inside and sleeping with her bipeds.
Ellie and I are the first up in this neighborhood, and probably a few others.
I nod, and Ellie digs in.
The slowdown bowl does absolutely nothing, not anymore. Her breakfast is gone in less than thirty seconds, and I take one slice of the orange into my mouth, disappointed immediately that the taste can only be compared to the instant Tang "orange juice" that all the kids craved in the early '70s.
In fact, the second slice mirrored the first; juicy, but diluted, as if your mother might have economized and only put one scoop of Tang powder into an enormous glass of water.
If you know, you know.
My Mama is a child of the depression, and cutting back on the Tang powder was akin to the way she mixed powdered milk with whole milk in a Tupperware pitcher to stretch the store-bought gallon longer so that all four kids got their dose of calcium.
None of us have had bone density issues, so Mama was wise.
I finished the orange, threw the one-piece peeling into the garbage can, still a bit haughty about my success. Still, I was disappointed in the dull party in my mouth as the juicy morsels were no better than space food from 1969.
I sipped my coffee in the dark, Ellie already back on her bed, snoring.
I surmised that oranges that are more difficult to peel sometimes are the sweetest. Life is like that, too, I think. Maybe I could sell the idea for a tee shirt to the tourist bureau of Florida.
It's doubtful; I'll keep it to myself.
With this morning's orange being so easily peeled, adding its diluted state of sweetness to my lifelong study, I believed I might have settled on a hypothesis to ponder further in the future. The theory may come, but I'll have to grab another bag of oranges at the grocery store later this week.
A man has to decide what he wants more in life, and I think I'll take sweetness over an easy peel, no matter how good it felt to conquer that task so easily, in the dark, before coffee.
From the Jagged Edge of America, I remain,
TC
