What the Water Knows

I sit on the back porch steps with an orange in my palm, its skin dimpled like the hands that hold it. The morning sun warms the wrought iron, just as it did when I was a girl running barefoot through these same gardens. My granddaughter Sarah, six years old and full of questions, watches me peel it.

"Grandma, why do you always peel oranges so slow?"

I smile at her, thinking of Buster, the golden retriever who slept at my feet through four decades of mornings. "Because, sweet pea, some things taste better when you take your time. And besides, the spray — you see?" I press the peel, and a fine mist releases into the air. "This is the orange saying hello to your nose before it meets your tongue."

She giggles, and the sound carries across the yard to where the old fountain bubbles. Water, my father used to say, has a memory. It remembers every stone it's touched, every hand that's cupped it, every tear that's joined its flow. The fountain was his gift to Mother on their fiftieth anniversary, and now it outlives them both.

"Grandma, tell me about when you were little."

So I tell her about the summers when I'd run through the sprinkler until my skin turned to gooseflesh, about the way the orange groves smelled like sunshine and promise, about how Buster would chase the jets of water until he collapsed, panting and happy, beside me on the grass.

"Did he live forever?" Sarah asks, her small hand finding mine.

"Almost," I say, squeezing her fingers. "Some things just borrow a little extra time."

I place an orange segment in her palm, smooth and perfect as a small planet. "Your great-grandfather taught me something about oranges. He said each segment is a day, and you have to savor them separately before they're gone."

She pops it into her mouth, juice sticky on her chin. Behind us, the water continues its endless conversation with stone and time, whispering secrets only the old know how to hear.