Mothers, Daughters and Pomegranate Seeds

While dismantling a ripe pomegranate for my husband, I think about Demeter and Persephone. The mother loved her daughter so passionately that she could not bear the thought of Persephone going off with a man to have her own life. Could not bear to be without her, and fell into grief.

Neither could the daughter bear to leave her mother. With Hades, she resisted eating except for those few seeds of pomegranate.

Persephone knew eating in the underworld would stop her from returning to her mother. Mother and daughter, daughter and mother. Profound relationships – even such that they affect the weather, the crops, the life of the entire community. When the mother and daughter are reunited, everything is sunshine and flowers and fruit again.

Persephone ate five seeds…only five. It was enough. After that she had to divide her time between her old life in the upper world and her new one below.

I think about my own daughter. She was home for Christmas, and now she has gone back to the adult life she has created for herself. If she were here, she too would soon be digging her spoon into a bowl of the red jeweled seeds of pomegranate I am preparing, as I have done for her and her dad so many times before.

But the forward movement of time has made her a woman, and taken her to another city where she has her own life. As I hand the bowl of pomegranate seeds to my husband, he speaks of her fondness for this fruit. We miss her presence here.