Lately, when I make tea in the afternoons—itself its own version of a lately—I find myself peeling an orange while I wait for the bag to steep. The 5 minutes or so I wait for the tea to steep feels too short a time to return to my desk, no task worth doing in such time except the peeling and eating of an orange, which I do while leaning against my kitchen counter. Despite doing this for months, it was only a few days ago that I noticed the way these acts intertwine, how pouring the water over the tea bag immediately provokes a craving for an orange, nearly Pavolvian.
If you’ve followed me on Instagram for any number of years the idea of stress citrus might ring a bell. Winter is often dark and dry, but one of its redeeming qualities is how citrus comes into its peak season. There have always been bags of clementines in my house (I do have children, after all), but in January and February there’s always larger oranges in the drawer. This year has been heavy on Sumos. The peel is thick and easy to remove, the right not-too-big, not-too-small size, that satisfying little nub at the top you take off like a hat. This week also saw tiny blood oranges. I have Cara Caras arriving in today’s grocery order.
Oranges and tea are about both scent and process. Making tea’s more like a brief pause, a long breath, passive but welcome, especially for those of us who are always looking for something to do in our spare 5 minutes. Peeling an orange is, dare I say, violent. In college a friend taught me to do it with a spoon, but I prefer to do it with my fingers, paper cuts be damned. I like the ripping, the revealing, the rush and reward of the smell, the way the scent lingers under my nails. Most years I enjoy the quiet of winter, but even I am not immune to its dreariness, and this winter has seemed especially so—did New York see the sun for most of January? It did not.— and performing this unsheathing of an orange is a sensory pleasure that feels far off in the colder, grayer months, a way to literally touch and taste the other seasons I’ve maybe convinced myself I’d rather be in.
The tea and orange ritual is what transitions me to whatever task I’m facing in the afternoon: student work, class prep, or work on my novel (a project that has recently been overtaken by the aforementioned teaching work). And it has become that, a ritual, a repeated act that locates me. Often writers create rituals around their work, but this one was an accident. I’ve never drunk this much tea, not in amounts—it’s a single cup, usually Rishi Chai or their ginger turmeric or one of the Harney & Sons black teas, often with milk—but in consistency. I have been inconsistent in so much else in my life this winter: my own work most notably, because little moments of chaos have erupted well, consistently. I’ll spare you my list of minor complaints and say life feels disrupted right now, and I’m longing for anchors. This ritual I didn’t even know was a ritual seems to matter, in part because I didn’t consciously create it, but somehow it shows up for me day after day. And by it I suppose I mean me; I’m still showing up for myself day after day, even as it can feel like I’m not showing up for much. Measure my days in orange peels and used tea bags, not word count, please.
It strikes me as apt that I keep putting in the regular headings I use to organize this version of the newsletter and then taking them out, that I’m resisting saying things in the usual way. I keep thinking about Katherine May’s book Wintering, about the seasons of living under the cover of what may feel like darkness but that is as often time in the fertile soil for future growth. I’m writing on Valentine’s Day, a holiday I don’t mark, and it occured to me this morning as people debate what holidays are “real” or “invented” that what I most believe in is seasons and cycles, an ongoing push and pull that repeats and repeats outside and inside us, something we don’t have to make happen at all.
Talk Soon,
Danielle
I love clementines (and all citrus) in the winter so much that I now count down the days to buying my first crate of the season in November. My novel used to have a full page rhapsodizing about them, mostly as a marker of season change, before I reluctantly accepted it was probably more than needed (they were paired with tea — and oatcakes).
This is the perfect complement piece to share with my upcoming post on self-accommodations!
As someone who's neurology makes unconscious actions or habits impossible—every single step taken in the day of a neurodivergent person is conscious (and exhausting), unfortunately—it's always interesting to read how someone else's brain experiences life, even in the simplest of things.
I'll be sharing this next week! Thanks, Danielle!